Horrific images continue to come out of Maui. Reports are now indicating that 110+ people lost their lives in the inferno that enveloped Maui. In addition, more than 1100 people still are unaccounted for. More recently it has been announced that more than 2000 children are not accounted for. Maui is fast becoming one of the worst disasters in US history.
The Daily Mail reported: “Maui authorities are dramatically underplaying the number of people known to have died in the inferno that ripped through Lahaina last week – with locals telling DailyMail.com that the actual death toll is at least 480 and that morgues had run out of body bags.”
The facts are that the inferno that engulfed Lahaina had temperatures in excess of 2000 degrees. That is more than enough to totally incinerate human bodies. Many people may never be found.
Why would they be ignoring the real counts? Do they need to spin this disaster away from the absolute incompetence of the people in emergency management? Are their PR teams working on a campaign to shift the blame away from actions taken or not taken that exacerbated the damage done by this event?
These wildfires may be properly classified as a “woke-caused” disaster. How so? After all, there are multiple reports of downed power lines being the initiating cause for the fires.
The Wall Street Journal notes that Hawaiian Electric was well aware of the potential for this kind of crisis occurring. However, they diverted resources away from fire safety measures in order to meet state-required green energy mandates.
In 2015, lawmakers passed legislation mandating that the state derive 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2045, the first such requirement in the U.S.
The company dove into reaching the goals, stating in 2017 that it would reach the benchmark five years ahead of schedule.
In 2019, under pressure to replace the output of two conventional power plants set to retire, the company sought to contract for 900 megawatts of renewable energy, the most it had pursued at any one time.
“You have to look at the scope and scale of the transformation within [Hawaiian Electric] that was occurring throughout the system,” said Mina Morita, who chaired the state utilities commission from 2011 to 2015. “While there was concern for wildfire risk, politically the focus was on electricity generation.”
Most companies have limited capital. Choices have to be made. Doing one thing precludes doing something else. Hawaiian Electric could have spent more money on hardening their system to fire risks. However, woke legislators adhering to climate change theology were mandating the drive to renewables.
I can hear the pretending coming from government types already.
“We did not foresee the power lines coming down.”
Oh no? At the end of 2019, Hawaiian Electric issued a press release about wildfire risks after hurricane-based winds contributed to a significant 2018 blaze. Didn’t the California wildfire blazes from a few years back teach anyone anything besides how to file lawsuits against power companies?
“We did not foresee the need to have emergency procedures in place to divert needed water to fight the blazes.”
Specifically, according to accounts of four people with knowledge of the situation, M. Kaleo Manuel, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner and DLNR’s deputy director for water resource management, initially balked at requests for additional water to help prevent the fire from spreading.
What did they expect the firefighters to do when they did not have access to needed water to fight the blazes?
Will the magnitude of the destruction be enough to cause people to rethink the costs of social justice narratives and their potentially destructive “solutions?”
This capacity for denial and pretending is unbelievable. The governor is already pushing the narrative that “while some mistakes may have been made,” climate change made things worse. His furrowed brow is not fooling most people.
I can hear the “solutions” coming from those who need to divert the attention of the people from the horrific nature of what happened in Maui. I am sure that some people are already to being anointed to show up to save us all. How will the media assist in this process?
“We will build back better using smart devices. We will rise like the phoenix from the ashes of this disaster. This will be an inspiring story of humans overcoming.”
Maybe some of these people will be the same people who were trotted out for the COVID scam.
These people do not want people thinking too hard about burned up kids. That would be kryptonite. They need to bamboozle people with BS. That’s probably why Biden agreed to visit Maui when he never went near Palestine, OH. And, of course, Hawaii is a blue state.