'Total Lie': Maui Resident Calls Out Police Chief for Saying Officers Knocked on Doors
A claim by Maui’s police chief that officers tried to evacuate residents from the deadly Aug. 8 fires is being rejected by one local leader of relief efforts.
Fires raged through the island, devastating the town of Lahaina. To date, 115 people have been officially listed as fire victims, with hundreds more missing.
In the aftermath of the disaster, many residents have spoken out about the lack of warning they received. Although Maui has a system of warning sirens, they were not activated.
On Tuesday, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said police drove up and down Lahaina streets, knocking on doors and using loudspeakers to urge evacuations, according to the Associated Press.
AP has sought records to detail when and where that took place because Pelletier did not provide those facts, and information has not yet been released.
Rescue leader Dale Hermo-Fernandez said it never happened, according to Breitbart.
“Lie. Total lie. Total lie. That is false. No loudspeaker, nothing,” he said.
He said there was “no warning, no sirens. Nobody knew.”
The first fires on the island broke out on the morning of Aug. 8. A brush fire was pronounced contained, but re-ignited after firefighters left the area, according to Honolulu Civil Beat.
Firefighters ordered an evacuation along one road as they fought the fire, which flared up at 3 p.m., but nowhere else, it reported.
At 4:30 p.m., residents were being told to shelter in place, even as the wind-stoked flames headed for Lahaina.
Lisa Vorpahl told The Washington Post that police were in her neighborhood for an early fire that started when high winds snapped a power pole and that at 6:37 a.m. they were urging evacuations.
A few hours later, Eddy Vorpahl, Lisa’s husband, recalled that “Nothing was happening. A couple fire engines were there. They were all packing stuff up. It looked 100 percent fine.”
Ingrid Lynch said officers were at her house in the morning about a fallen tree, but never mentioned fires as a threat, according to Civil Beat.
“At that point, they never said anything to us about evacuating,” she said.
Hermo-Fernandez said police caused a bottleneck, according to Breitbart.
“In fact, the police made a mistake. They forced people down the Front Street thinking it was safe, which at the time I could see what — you know, if I’m a police officer in the middle of that, I can see where he was coming from, because Hanoapiilani Highway had had the lines down on the ground, so nobody could really pass it. So I could see why he would tell him go around on Front Street. But that also created a gridlock in Front Street. And when the gridlock locked up, nobody, nobody could move,” he said.
Pelletier told AP that residents were trapped between “downed power lines, which would kill you if you drove over them — or a fire that’s engulfed the area.”
He said police barricades never stopped people from fleeing.
Hawaiian Electric Company on Sunday pushed back against a Maui County lawsuit putting the blame for the fires on the utility, according to the Associated Press.
Maui County claimed power was not shut off when the fires erupted, a claim the utility denied.
The utility admitted that the morning fire on Aug. 8 “appears to have been caused by power lines that fell in high winds.” Hawaiian Electric said firefighters are to blame that the fire re-ignited and became a deadly blaze.
Richard Fried, a Honolulu attorney working as co-counsel on Maui County’s lawsuit, countered that if the power company’s lines hadn’t caused the initial fire, “this all would be moot.”
“That’s the biggest problem,” Fried said. “They can dance around this all they want. But there’s no explanation for that.”
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