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Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

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Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#41

Post by AnimalMuppet »

rewmie wrote: post #40
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.

Directions from emergency services are sometimes wrong.

Let us admit that they are usually right. But not always. Remember that.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#43

Post by unshavedyak »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #41
rewmie wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Directions from emergency services are sometimes wrong. Let us admit that they are usually right. But not always. Remember that .

Also worth remembering that frequently the average person has no idea what to do in emergencies and the gut response is frequently wrong, if not terribly wrong.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#44

Post by omniglottal »

rewmie wrote: post #38
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 t…

What's realy weird is your conversation existing in this context of how the official's blockade would kill those who obeyed it.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#45

Post by omniglottal »

unshavedyak wrote: post #43
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Directions from emergency services are sometimes wrong. Let us admit that they are usually right. But not always. Remember that .

Also worth remembering that frequently the average person has no idea what to do in emergencies and the gut response is frequently wrong, if not terribly wrong.

The police are average people too.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#46

Post by creer »

bell-cot wrote: post #31

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-wo…

"Sensibility to climate change" has nothing to do with competence in "plus 4 sigma" disaster response. For that matter usually neither does the latest election.

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.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#47

Post by Drunk_Engineer »

civilitty wrote: post #24

Everyone's focused on the barricades (orange cones from the sound of it) but this caught my eye at the end: > “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 it takes is one fallen power line or tree to turn that stroad into a giant parking lot of death. Cutting back brush and undergrounding power lines is much more cost-effective than building stroads up into the hillsides.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#48

Post by creer »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #20
phpisthebest wrote: post #9

Survival is almost always increased by ignoring government officials, I dont know why we have to keep relearning this lesson over and over again but some people still follow government like they have some divine knowledge Government works best which is subservient to the people, the second it becomes something else bad things will happen

No. Government generally has a much better big picture than you do and thus is more likely to get it right. 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.

The government's plan is then probably about overall statistics and nothing to do with your personal well being. You better consider it.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#49

Post by creer »

phpisthebest wrote: post #25
LorenPechtel wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Government generally has a much better big picture than you do and thus is more likely to get it right. 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.

I am not sure how anyone can claim this with a strait face having lived through 2020-2023.... which is living memory so I do not have to do back into the recorded history to show government failure. I can just talk about my lived experience at how completely incompetent government is at managing "emergencies" Central planning is always bad, be it for emergencies or economics or anything else

As opposed to?

I mean there isn't much alternative to central planning. But that doesn't prevent local planning and individuals doing the best for themselves.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#50

Post by s1artibartfast »

rewmie wrote: post #40
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.

The applicability of advice obviously depends on where you are on the knowledge/intelligence bell curve.

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.

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