Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires
apnews.com
apnews.com
There are plenty of wildfires where individuals "responsible for their own safety" got themselves killed by driving straight into the expected path of the fire, against the express directions of emergency services. Would you call those cases a win in the libertarian books?
It's very weird how this belief that your amateur ignorance is far superior to the informed guidance of professional emergency services can get any traction whatsoever.
Similarly here ignoring a barricade in a wildfire is a great way to find yourself driving into the path of the fire, getting yourself killed, and there are plenty examples of people doing just that. The fact that in this case those placing the barriers got it wrong, and ignoring them may have saved lives does not make it a good idea to ignore such warnings in the general case.
I don't know my point really except to bring up another instance where local emergency response did not make sense and it is incredibly frustrating when it causes additional harm.
[0]https://www.npr.org/2023/02/15/1157174863/tucson-hazardous-c...
And this are buildings that would have gone thru regular fire drills, etc.
Those that listened & were above the ~80th floor, did not survive
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-sinking-of-the-...
Government works best which is subservient to the people, the second it becomes something else bad things will happen
Where they typically get it wrong is avoiding a known small risk vs a possible bigger risk. However, in this case it seems to be a known small risk vs a certain much bigger risk.
>Scott shows how central governments attempt to force legibility on their subjects, and fail to see complex, valuable forms of local social order and knowledge. A main theme of this book, illustrated by his historic examples, is that states operate systems of power toward 'legibility' in order to see their subjects correctly in a top-down, modernist, model that is flawed, problematic, and often ends poorly for subjects. The goal of local legibility by the state is transparency from the top down, from the top of the tower or the center/seat of the government, so the state can effectively operate upon their subjects.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State#:~:text=....
Central planning is always bad, be it for emergencies or economics or anything else
I mean there isn't much alternative to central planning. But that doesn't prevent local planning and individuals doing the best for themselves.
Some of these were over turned by the courts after months or years of fighting, some the central planners just rescinded, but in all cases the central planning supplanted local and individual freedom
In the context of Maui, I bet there are federal policies in place on the subject of Forrest management, fire control, etc that all supplant local authority, and certainly remove individual control
In the case of Covid, as much as the top policies were messed up in places, individuals around me very much paid attention and did what they could in addition or in place of that. They still run their own testing standards for example and take anything from CDC with a grain of salt (that will take a LONG time to fix - probably for the better). For one, the massive amounts of money poured into vaccines and lab tests and home tests, IMO, made a difference that would have been much harder to achieve for locals or purely commercial efforts.
For example, I am fine with the CDC Existing, I am fine with them advocating the public do x, or y, I am fine with them establishing protocols and guidance for people
I am not fine with them having the authority to order people to do X, or to exceed their authority prohibiting evictions, or working with private industry to target people for censorship that dared to question their advice or many of the other things
Again read my opening comment "Government works best which is subservient to the people" this means the government can ADVISE people on the best actions to take, but should not ORDER people to do it...
The second the government has the power to ORDER you do something well you are now a serf and not a free person.
Yeah, the big picture includes sacrificing you in favor of somebody more "important" than you.
The Cajun Navy started out with someone's great aunt rounding up some bass boats in the swamp to send to New Orleans after Katrina. It now has dispatchers on call (which takes pressure off of the 911 system) collecting needs, channeling volunteers where rescues are needed, and piping emergencies to 911. Also, has built expertise around post-disaster rebuilding - CNGF has boots on the ground in Maui.
Only you have the personal context.
I know several people that have ignored fire evacuation orders and saved their homes instead. No fire department is going to tell people to fight the fire because they don't know people's individual situations.
Shelter and place orders are another funny one. I have a lot of fond memories ignoring shelter in place orders hiking and camping in the wilderness during covid. It probably reduced my risk versus Sheltering at home. Blanket orders were one size fits all, made to address the person that is going to parties and bars.
The government is never looking out for your individual interests. It only cares about the average, and you can be the person that dies as collateral damage from an order that still has a good average outcome
This only works up to a point. If everyone stays home and turns on their sprinklers and hoses, the water distribution system quickly fails, and then NOBODY can fight the fire, be it individuals or the average. This is a very simple lesson that was learned more than a century ago. Acting in a selfish manner only works if a tiny fraction of people do that. We typically name these people after a certain excreting orifice for a reason.
The people that I know that fought fires are Rural and not even on a distribution system. They saved their home while the firefighters passively watched their neighbors houses burned down. The firefighters orders were to make sure there were no fires by a Road intersection, and since there weren't, this meant standing around doing nothing for 24 hours within shouting distance of houses burning down. A good example of how public priorities don't always match your personal priorities.
I get that people hate non-conformists and deviance, but Not everything needs to be an us vs them zero-sum game.
Lots of wildfire stories include people who ignored evacuation orders and died. This is just silly confirmation bias. The large majority of people who survive wildfires do so because they listened to government officials and implying that people should ignore evacuation orders is frankly stupidly dangerous.
>Shelter and place orders are another funny one. I have a lot of fond memories ignoring shelter in place orders hiking and camping in the wilderness during covid. It probably reduced my risk versus Sheltering at home. Blanket orders were one size fits all, made to address the person that is going to parties and bars.
How would going out lower your risk in this case? You obviously increased your risk, if only so slightly.
Edit* I literally just got notice of a level 3 evac that doesn't cover me but is near me. I'm sure all those "non-conformists" will stay and make life miserable for firefighters.
Are you claiming that government orders are optimal 100% of the time in 100% of situations? If not, then sometimes it is wrong, and it might be wrong for you.
>How would going out lower your risk in this case? You obviously increased your risk, if only so slightly.
Being alone miles from anyone else has zero covid risk. Covid risk doesn't kick in when you leave the door of your house. In my case, I also had roommates who worked, like me and interacted with other people.
Of course not. Your example was just not a situation where not following orders was individually optimal. You and your friends are suffering from confirmation bias. They did something incredibly stupid and dangerous and put their lives at risk and more importantly, increased risk for the firefighters working the job. It happened to work out but that doesn't mean it was wise. They could have just as easily died or killed a firefighter who was trying to rescue them.
Why don't you reach out to a wildland firefighters outfit and see their perspective on what bullshit they have to deal with when dumbasses don't evacuate.
For the vast majority of people, the vast majority of the time, following emergency instructions is the optimal outcome. Even in this case, the folks who went around the barrier didn't know that going around was safer than going back. They gambled and it worked out.
>Being alone miles from anyone else has zero covid risk. Covid risk doesn't kick in when you leave the door of your house. In my case, I also had roommates who worked, like me and interacted with other people.
Ah yes, I'm sure you magically went from your bedroom to wilderness miles away from anyone else without stopping or interacting with anyone!
Look, I'm not saying going out in the wilderness was wrong, its just silly to think it lowered your risk at all.
You can't claim that they put their lives at risk and made a stupid mistake without that information.
The same holds true for the covid example. You don't know the specifics and are making a generalization. It is in fact possible to go camping without interacting with people.
I was thinking more about sheltering from tornados and hurricanes.
Im not saying never follow orders, just that by definition universal orders aren't best for everyone in every situation. Common sense goes a long way towards contextualizing them and their usefulness.
For example at different times I have went to my basement during while the tornado sirens where going off, and other times I have stood outside looking at the clouds...
Why because I took the governments recommendation, added my own information from various weather sources, radar, and decades of experience and formulated my personal risk at that moment
It's been two weeks now. Does this mean that roughly 1,000 people died?
[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/11/16/668552010/more-than-600-peopl...
https://www.wcvb.com/article/station-nightclub-fire-20th-ann...
I find this hard to believe. Substations have remote control. Even if they are so old that they do not, send out a lineman crew and open the cutouts. You have to be able to do this to do maintenance and repair, it's not believable that they cannot "turn off" power in an emergency.
Do you think that this could be a realistic danger? (or not because there are systems put in place that avoid it?)
If yes, how we could suspect foul game and hunt that person, or how the electric companies could defend its property against that possibility [1]?
[1] (I understand that the companies should have removed any flammable materials under the lines first to avoid negligence)
An argument could me made that the company is negligible, and possibly criminally liable for manslaughter, although that would be a stretch.
> “The gridlock would have left us there when the firestorm came,” Cuevas-Reyes, 38, told the AP. “I would have had to tell my children to jump into the ocean as well and be boiled alive by the flames or we would have just died from smoke inhalation and roasted in the car.”
That kind of gridlock is why we have all of those giant stroads everyone loves to complain about every few blocks in California. A few years ago my house was one mile from a wildfire in SoCal and the two lane road was overwhelmed during the evacuation despite only supporting a small exurban population. Now at my new suburban house, the neighboring development recently got halted after only building out 20% of the units because the fire marshal calculated that our surrounding roads wouldn't be able to support the traffic in case of evacuation. The developer is trying to get a new freeway on-ramp approved atm, otherwise they'll have to switch from dense 5-over-1s to single family homes in the rest of the development.
This is a reminder for everyone to download and print out the evacuation routes and tape them to the inside of your door! When done correctly, they're carefully designed to allow as many people to get out as fast as possible without causing gridlock while still allowing emergency vehicles in.
Unfortunately this is all carried out at the state and local level so it takes a tragedy like Lahaina for people to really start investing in proper (sub)urban and emergency planning.
"The utility says more than 30 power poles are down in West Maui, including along the Honoapiilani Highway at the south end of Lahaina." (That Highway aka Highway 30) was the main southern route out of town.)
"A telephone pole falls behind their car, causing an accident and blocking a side street."
Everyone living in an area needs enough space to evacuate fast enough to get away from natural disasters safely. It doesn't matter if there's a downed power line when no one can get out due to gridlock even in the best case scenario. Everyone's gotta be able to get out fast enough.
https://apnews.com/article/hawaii-fires-timeline-maui-lahain...
They literally sent people to die, under the color of authority as working under county government.
Will anybody face accountability?
edit: I'm rate-limited but to provide an a historical analog:
In 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire killed over a hundred young women working in the garment industry. The building's doors were locked by the owners of the factory to reduce theft.
The owners were found liable for the deaths of their employees, but the damages were a pittance.
I have trouble seeing "deliberately blocking the means of egress with reckless disregard for its need in an emergency evacuation for the sake of your own convenience" as profoundly different here.
If you're more worried about being dinged on your next performance review than saving people's lives, then yes, you should face accountability.
Somebody decided that preparing for this fully-predictable event wasn't a priority.
So every time the utility needs to do line maintenance, it has to draw up contingency plans for a nuclear strike?
The problem wasn't overzealous road closures. It was a general lack of a fire plan.
That's what accountability means. If the person in charge did nothing wrong, then the court will tell that. But you can't say “everything went fine, nothing to see here” when people died.
Ultimately, the buck stops with the individual, and you can't completely outsource personal responsibility.
This advice is pretty bad, and reeks of survivorship bias. This "truthiness" approach to safety purposely ignores the countless cases of morons getting themselves killed by intentionally ignoring directions from emergency services.
Let us admit that they are usually right. But not always. Remember that.
Trust training, not your gut.
Hard to quickly judge: How much applicable good training/experience does the law officer who is giving you directions (in an emergency) have? And ditto for the command structure behind him, which is most likely where the "direct people to go $This way, not $That way" decisions are coming from.
Let's assume you are right, and just presume that a police officer is as useless in an emergency response scenario as your average Joe.
Police officers are a part of a regional- and state-wide organization dedicated to respond to emergencies, collect and process information from multiple sources including direct presence in critical areas, and coordinate the efforts of all members. All members, including your hypothetical police officer.
Do you really think that your personal ignorance and lack of insight and context and situational awareness is no better than that of the police officer who is integrated in that state-wide organization dedicated to act during these events?
Industrial levels of arrogance and presumption are required to think the average Joe knows best on how to act during an emergency than emergency responders on the ground.
At what point does someone stop becoming "average people" for us to think that our gut doesn't outsmart them?
Lets not forget that "average people" are commonly barely better than animals in emergency situations. Look at how much training it takes to ensure a building full of people don't trample each other to death in the event of a building emergency.
There's a very wide gulf between being ultimately responsible for your own safety and assuming that your immediate, uneducated gut reactions are more informed than professionals with training.
Blindly following orders makes sense if 1) you are an idiot or 2) your gut agrees and it seems sensible.
If you are knowledgeable and you think something is wrong, that should be cause for second-guessing.
The problem is that every single one of us is an idiot at <many subjects>, and in a large number of them, we don't even know that we are idiots.
If your town is on fire in a sign, possibly outdated, points You Into The Inferno, don't follow it!
If there is a safe spot that you have personal knowledge of, go there despite the directions.
There were downed power lines in the roads, blocking traffic. Many of these power lines were in the outbound lanes.
The AP article cited for the claim that there were barricades shows officers directing evacuees around a downed power line while utility workers try to remove it from the road.
What is the best move if stuck in gridlock with fires oncoming?
And those are the 2 salient points in an article thick with emotion and implications.
Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. But they present no evidence to support their claims...
Given the general anarchy and confusion, I
Hindsight is of little value to those who were making decisions in the moment, but really, "make your own rules during an emergency" seems like it isn't guaranteed to be effective. You're just as likely to be adding to the problem as anything.
You could have driven right into a fire or into a tangle of live power lines. You could have endangered the lives of the road crew working on the power lines, or could have caused an incident that prevented the road from being opened at all, preventing anyone from escaping that way - you don't know when or if it was going to be reopened. So possibly worse? Absolutely. And keep in mind that the "burning alive in your car" wasn't a guaranteed outcome here - many people survived.
That said, preparation is key.
> a logger’s first aid kit, a flashlight, the new Army bayonet (designed mainly as a tool), a folding shovel, and Vibram-soled boots
Note, that article is from 1990. It's a recounting of the '89 San Francisco earthquake.
[0]: https://sb.longnow.org/SB_homepage/Earthquake_Lessons.html
In general and for the society at large, what you want is order. Listen to authorities, do what they say. If everyone is in full panic mode, its very likely even more people die. By following directions and maintaining order, you increase the odds that more people survive.
For you personally? Go in full panic mode, do whatever you have to, to live. At the end of the day, no one is getting a ticket for running a police barricade. But some people that listened are literally dead.
Basically - I want everyone else to be calm and follow directions, and I want to push my way to the front and save myself.
The author looks at case studies (and some stats iirc) of a bunch of people in life-threatening situations, some who survived and others not. He looks at how they acted, gets into the psychology of why people act that way, and pulls out some lessons.
One of them was "think for yourself, don't just follow instructions." One example was 9/11, during which some people in the towers were told to just stay where they were. Some of those who ignored that instruction made it out.
Experience: Houston, from Allison to Harvey.
Staying in the path of a disaster is clearly not a good idea.
In the end if you value your private property so much that you'd risk your life you'll make bad decisions. I'm dumb but not that dumb.
There has to be some rule for spotting the inefficacy of the responders. But it's quite hard to make something that works. Even "know about the emergency and how things work around it" tends to fail often. Also, the next "obvious" one of "past performance is damn highly correlated with future performance" is so full of problems that it's completely counterproductive.
Reaction II - when a fast-moving "plus 4 sigma" disaster hits, what's the usual batting average for any local municipal government handling it correctly? I'm betting "d*mned low". This is real-world America - not a "competence porn" movie from Hollywood, nor a "they were morally responsible..." term paper in Philosophy 271.
Reality Check - coverage of Maui's last municipal election is here: https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/11/maui-county-richard-bissen... Notice that "protecting from climate change" gets all of one in-passing mention in the long article. And nothing closer to the actual disaster is even mentioned. Concept: if an "all the experts are warning us" potential $Disaster is of minimal interest to local voters...then it's hardly surprising if the local government which they elect is neither physically nor mentally capable of coping with $Disaster.
Disaster preparedness or response is about readiness and means (purchased ahead of time) to do pretty ad-hoc things on very short notice. The slow, long trend isn't the issue. For that matter, once the fire was a large and fast wildfire there quite possibly wasn't much that the entire island could have magically instantly moved to Lahaina to make much difference. The "authorization to release water" is a more interesting one: it was earlier and it was means on hand and it was a few persons' opportunity to be informed and ready to "just do it". And again nothing to do with climate change but instead everything to do with a "now and right here" problem.
https://www.civilbeat.org/2023/08/a-state-official-refused-t...
This water dispute has been going on for a while. From that article: "In 2022, two Maui senators, Gil Keith-Agaran and Lynne DeCoite, introduced a measure to push DLNR to allow fresh water to be used to fight fires and pointed to West Maui as being particularly vulnerable." The measure didn't go anywhere.
Obviously we should use water to save lives and there were errors there, but I’m 100% confident that the question of whether we can use water to fight fires didn’t come up for no reason.
Are you also going to jail people for not following procedures, if the outcome turned out to be bad?