During an interview with Hawaii News Now that took place on Saturday and was released on Sunday, Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen stated that the criticisms of the response to the fires in Hawaii are being done “with the benefit of, not only hindsight, but the benefit of seeing everything that we now know.” And whether they will sound the alarms in future emergencies is “a discussion we’re having.” But he can’t say what he would have done.
Bissen said, “[T]o look back on it now and to say, well, you should have done this and why didn’t you do that is with the benefit of, not only hindsight, but the benefit of seeing everything that we now know. I can’t tell you again, what everybody knew. I knew our power lines were out, our phone systems were out, the communication we had was from those in the field — and when I say in the field, a firefighter fighting a fire in one location may not be able to tell us what is happening at another location. And it was spread all over.”
Later, Hawaii News Now host and Reporter Annalisa Burgos asked, “Are you going to change the way emergency response is — like you said, lessons from this, this is hurricane season, this is probably not going to be the last disaster you’re going to experience, will you sound alarms now, the sirens? Will that be a new kind of requirement because of the backlash that we saw with the previous situation?”
Bissen answered, “Yeah, that’s certainly a discussion we’re having. I know we’re going to do everything in our power to alert our people, to help our people, and to prevent those sort of things from happening [that are] happening right now. … I don’t know that I have the final say on the policies, or if that’s left to the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency or if that’s something that’s left to each individual [county]. Of course, we want to do everything that we can to inform people, to alert people, to prepare people. … We certainly have given our input on that as well.”
Burgos then asked, “I’m sure you saw Gov. Josh Green (D) said he would have sounded the alarms or sounded the sirens. Would you have?”
Bissen responded, “I’m not sure what he said about that. But I’m not going to second-guess what anybody else’s decisions were or did. Again, that’s probably not fair to put that on anyone else. Director Oliveira and I have talked about that as well. There’s a lot more information to come out about that, at least I think everybody knows now what they would do, but, at the time, I can’t tell you what went through that decision-making.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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