Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires • Hacker News Board

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#31

Post by bell-cot » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 4:37 PM UTC

Reaction I - any reason why "we" (HN) are looking at The Hill for coverage on this topic? The Hill basically is a Washington(DC)-centric political news site. Not public safety, nor municipal government, nor wildfire, nor ...

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.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#32

Post by gorkish » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 4:44 PM UTC

supportengineer wrote: post #5

The local government failed at every possible level, resulting in so many tragic deaths.

One thing that hasn't been much discussed but is very important regarding the Hawaii fires is that 'local government' works very differently in HI than in most states: There are no official city boundaries or city governments, only county governments. In the case of Maui, the local government (mostly in Kahului) administers three populated islands: Maui, Molokai, and Lanai. I won't claim to understand how this impacted their response to the fires; however, at the very least it should be understood that the residents typically lack the layer of 'local government' that most other Americans living in towns or cities have.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#33

Post by throw7 » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 4:45 PM UTC

The AP article quoted: (it has an interactive timeline also)

https://apnews.com/article/hawaii-fires-timeline-maui-lahain...

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#34

Post by tegmark » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 4:50 PM UTC

and those korean kids on that ship, the only ones who survived were the ones who disobeyed orders. and theres video of the kids staying in place talking about a subway accident where people were told to stay put and the only ones who died were the ones who disobeyed. think for yourself.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#35

Post by tegmark » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

xoxxala wrote: post #15

ethanbond wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were the warnings they should've heeded differently?

A state official delayed releasing water for firefighting efforts over a water usage dispute: 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…

ethanbond is so silent…

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#36

Post by AwaAwa » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

supportengineer wrote: post #5

The local government failed at every possible level, resulting in so many tragic deaths.

A government isn't necessary during the good times, as much as during the bad. And this has only proven that a government like this, is not necessary.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#37

Post by tegmark » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

we dont live in a world where public servant are sage old men who are wise and knowledgeable, who have decades of experience in their domain and spend the majority of their time and effort working for the people. we live in a world where government employees are most likely a business or humanity major, are only knowledgeable or dedicated to their domain in a superficial way, and these people have dumb brains that arent detail oriented or creative. the only thing they do well is understand how to make sure they are never culpable for anything that might go wrong and ultimately protect their career above all else. these people are scum. if you are a middle aged, stem educated man then you would be wrong not to do a reality check when some government idiot puts barriers between you and your escape route. the bar is not high, think for yourself. even the scientists employed by the government have a nasty habit of being dishonest.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#38

Post by rewmie » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #14

People follow directions because they think the people giving them know what's best. Too late, they realize those people are only following directions given to them by someone else, further from the scene, with even less at stake. In a crisis, we need to be able to distinguish between the urge to act, and the urge to panic. It's very difficult. And it's more complicated than that, because sometimes those distant plan…

I really don't understand what point you tried to make. Claiming "you're the one responsible for your safety" really does not say anything, specially as you do not have the context or situational awareness to know whether staying put or running away will save your life or get you killed.

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.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#39

Post by autoexec » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 5:10 PM UTC

These are the kinds of situations that make me glad self driving cars still don't work well enough to replace human drivers. Humans can evaluate the entire situation and decide when to break rules, while self driving cars don't understand anything and can only follow rules according to what little it can detect and process. Humans are a lot more concerned with staying alive than following rules, but rules are all self driving cars know and they don't care at all if you burn to death or not.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#40

Post by rewmie » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 5:12 PM UTC

skidd0 wrote: post #7

Tragic events like this can be a reminder that the only person responsible for your safety is You. You Cannot rely on "officials" or rules to care more about you than you do. Trust your gut, maintain awareness. Do not be lulled into complacency by safety theatre.

> Trust your gut, maintain awareness.

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.