I don’t understand something. I know what some of you are thinking: shocker, he doesn’t understand something. Now hold on until you hear what I have to say here. The Maui fire. Please tell me what I’m not understanding. It has come out over the days following the fire that people in the know in Hawaii knew there was a great potential for this kind of disaster and yet did pretty much nothing to get in front of it. I think the most frightening piece of news to come out is that there are only 65 firefighters on Maui and they also service two other islands and Maui only has a couple dozen fire trucks. Large suburbs probably have more firefighters and equipment than that and how does that work where firefighters have to travel to other islands, they get a call and then hop on a boat, and how long does that take? Can’t imagine that works well if a fire is already raging. Oh wait, I think we already know that doesn’t work well. It was also reported that invasive grasses were brought in many years ago and are now everywhere on Maui and if there’s a spark and high winds…well you know the rest. The conversation since the fire is “there was no warning” and if there was “we wouldn’t know where to send people.” Wow! Well, here’s the bit. You know why this happened and it goes right into the category: people don’t want to spend money unless they really have to and by really have to I mean only when there’s a catastrophe. It’s the only reason we have higher security at airports or why airplanes change certain features. A plane has to purposely fly into buildings or a plane has to crash before corrections are ramped up. The weird thing is being preventative is much cheaper than waiting for a disaster if people are worried about spending money. How do people in charge not see that? Lahaina is/was Maui’s main tourist draw. There are major hotels several miles north of Lahaina. I was lucky enough to go to Maui numerous times on the dime of the radio station I worked at. It was incredible and allowed me to fantasize about running a sod farm on the island. Hey, I love sod farms and thought, now Maui is a great place for a sod farm. People who vacation in Maui generally hang out at the hotel and then would go into Lahaina to shop, eat, drink, take boat trips, see the banyan tree, etc. The western part of the island is THE draw. I don’t think the other parts of Maui are as developed. Tourism is 80% of the island’s economy and it looks like a long time before Lahaina is up and running. Billions of dollars will be lost in the process for who knows how long. Now tell me how much it costs to have the right amount of firefighters and equipment and whatever else it takes to make sure you can manage something like this fire? Knowing this fire was only a matter of time I’m guessing spending say 100 million in advance would’ve been much cheaper and more people would still be alive.
Klaatu Barada Nikto,
Garry