Anger in Hawaii over government response to fires, as death toll rises | DW News

the death toll for wildfires that swept through the Hawaiian island of Maui over the past week has risen to 89. it's now the deadliest Wildfire disaster in the United States for more than a century it's feared the number of deaths will rise further as sniffer dogs search burnt out homes for human remains thousands of people have been left homeless by the fires donations are arriving from across Hawaii and from the U.S Mainland people have been dropping off food water and clothing at Emergency Shelters Azure of the North Pacific lapse against Maui's torched coastline almost a week on from the wildfires the cleanup process across the island is underway [Music] as the U.S army are enlisted to help with the rescue efforts criticism of the emergency response is beginning to emerge yeah and I've pretty much everybody's saying the same thing that we had no warning no evacuation notice so a lot of people were not prepared you know that by the time they find out that it was time to go okay it was almost too late you know there a lot of people got trapped and it's just really sad Hawaii's governor said it's not yet possible to say if more could have been done over time we'll be able to figure out if we could have better protected people that's why we're reviewing everything we want to do that in a very open and transparent way but it it was complicated by the fact that there were multiple fires across this beautiful Island at the same time sing as efforts to count losses have only just begun most of the destroyed buildings were people's homes and with only a fraction search so far authorities expect the death toll to rise significantly with the fires businessly contained attention is now shifting to the response Hawaii's attorney general has opened an investigation into how authorities handle the disaster residents say they received no warning many are still trying to come to terms with what's happened really right now it's been so hot very hard never I think in my in my life but I have imagined that we would have something like this the catastrophe of an unequal disaster I would like to find a kijano family Coloma family and Villegas families which is three more three days now that everybody's looking for them I've only been here for like four or five years like somewhere in between and uh like a lot of the people I lived with didn't think it would happen I've seen a lot of wildfires growing up in Northern California I was just like when the smoke turned black I was like we need to get out of here journalist Naka Nathaniel is in Hawaii and has been following the story for us welcome to DW some very heartbreaking scenes we just saw in that report in the aftermath of this fire how are people coping people are still in shock here it really is been a soul-crushing experience so many people have not only had family there but have lived there and I was talking to a friend this afternoon who the restaurant he had worked in was gone then he also looked a little bit further at the rental unit that he had stayed in for years was also gone too it's just we're trying to make sense of what has exactly happened and trying to understand you know what is the possible future here is the worst over are the wildfires now fully under control yes for the most part and the what's happened is that the storm that led to so many of these high winds that really you know it just exacerbated the problem here caused The Inferno you know has passed and so this was the thing that uh was the unexpected part it was that the storm was so far away that we didn't think that we were going to experience any damage we had a storm just recently that was even closer but there was no damage but we're finding out that so many reports had been made already that Hawaii really was in a huge danger for wildfires but sadly those reports weren't heated yeah there's also been some talk about the government's inadequate response to this disaster what have you been hearing from people about that so unfortunately Hawaii was caught flat-footed the lieutenant governor who was in charge at the time because the governor was out of the state has said Hawaii was so very unprepared for this the two lead officials that would have led the led the evacuation were also off Island at the time so there was a real absence of leadership and to the point that there were no Sirens Hawaii has a very well developed early warning system when it comes to you know threats from tsunamis or other storms the sirens that most people would have listened to and led to the evacuation weren't sounded in Lahaina that was journalist Naka Nathaniel reporting for us from Hawaii thank you so much thank you

Channel: DW News

Views: 448,426

Keywords: DW News

Id: hXcNpaacvxk

Length: 5min 56sec (356 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 13 2023