Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires • Hacker News Board

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#111

Post by s1artibartfast » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 7:49 PM UTC

callalex wrote: post #103

s1artibartfast wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that it's context-specific. Only you have the personal context. I know several people that have ignored fire evacuation orders and saved their homes instead. No fire department is going to tell people to fight the fire because they don't know people's individual situations. Shelter and place orders are another funny one. I have a lot of fond memories ignoring shelter in place orders hiking and camping in…

>The government is never looking out for your individual interests. It only cares about the average, and you can be the person that dies that's collateral damage from an order that still has a good average outcome This only works up to a point. If everyone stays home and turns on their sprinklers and hoses, the water distribution system quickly fails, and then NOBODY can fight the fire, be it individuals or the avera…

I'm not saying everyone should stay home. I'm explicitly acknowledging that the average policy works for the average person.

The people that I know that fought fires are Rural and not even on a distribution system. They saved their home while the firefighters passively watched their neighbors houses burned down. The firefighters orders were to make sure there were no fires by a Road intersection, and since there weren't, this meant standing around doing nothing for 24 hours within shouting distance of houses burning down. A good example of how public priorities don't always match your personal priorities.

I get that people hate non-conformists and deviance, but Not everything needs to be an us vs them zero-sum game.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#112

Post by Karellen » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 8:03 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #80

Karellen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck ignoring the next government-issued evacuation order or shelter-in-place order in your region then.

The point is that it's context-specific. Only you have the personal context. I know several people that have ignored fire evacuation orders and saved their homes instead. No fire department is going to tell people to fight the fire because they don't know people's individual situations. Shelter and place orders are another funny one. I have a lot of fond memories ignoring shelter in place orders hiking and camping in…

> Shelter and place orders are another funny one. I have a lot of fond memories ignoring shelter in place orders hiking and camping in the wilderness during covid.

I was thinking more about sheltering from tornados and hurricanes.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#113

Post by massysett » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 8:07 PM UTC

Pxtl wrote: post #74

> The workers were motioning for everyone to turn back toward Lahaina. They literally sent people to die, under the color of authority as working under county government. Will anybody face accountability? edit: I'm rate-limited but to provide an a historical analog: In 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire killed over a hundred young women working in the garment industry. The building's doors were locked by the o…

Have you any indication that Shirtwaist is remotely comparable? It seems that here those who closed the road believed this was to promote safety. There’s no indication that Shirtwaist doors were blocked to promote safety.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#114

Post by andromeduck » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 8:36 PM UTC

LastCovidWave wrote: post #96

[flagged]

Officials who told everyone hand washing was more effective than wearing masks.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#115

Post by rootw0rm » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 8:43 PM UTC

gorwell wrote: post #61

> More than 100 deaths have been confirmed, and roughly 1,000 people remain unaccounted for. It's been two weeks now. Does this mean that roughly 1,000 people died?

More than 1,000 people were missing [1] in the Camp fire. 85 people died.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/11/16/668552010/more-than-600-peopl...

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#116

Post by s1artibartfast » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 8:44 PM UTC

Karellen wrote: post #112

s1artibartfast wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that it's context-specific. Only you have the personal context. I know several people that have ignored fire evacuation orders and saved their homes instead. No fire department is going to tell people to fight the fire because they don't know people's individual situations. Shelter and place orders are another funny one. I have a lot of fond memories ignoring shelter in place orders hiking and camping in…

> Shelter and place orders are another funny one. I have a lot of fond memories ignoring shelter in place orders hiking and camping in the wilderness during covid. I was thinking more about sheltering from tornados and hurricanes.

I see. the same holds true. If you have prior knowledge that your house is structurally unsound and your neighbor has a bomb proof house, you should probably use common sense and stay with your neighbors instead.

Im not saying never follow orders, just that by definition universal orders aren't best for everyone in every situation. Common sense goes a long way towards contextualizing them and their usefulness.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#117

Post by phpisthebest » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 8:45 PM UTC

creer wrote: post #49

phpisthebest wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why does there need to be an alternative, and yes central planning often does prevent both local planning and individuals " doing the best for themselves. " for example in the context of Covid response there were many FEDERAL policies put in place that preventing local authorities from overriding them, and prevented "individuals doing the best for themselves. "

Some of these were over turned by the courts after months or years of fighting, some the central planners just rescinded, but in all cases the central planning supplanted local and individual freedom

In the context of Maui, I bet there are federal policies in place on the subject of Forrest management, fire control, etc that all supplant local authority, and certainly remove individual control

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#118

Post by russdill » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 9:20 PM UTC

tegmark wrote: post #34

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.

People die all the time when they don't follow the advice of experts. There's a news worthiness confirmation bias of events that go the other way.

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#119

Post by phpisthebest » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

Karellen wrote: post #112

s1artibartfast wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that it's context-specific. Only you have the personal context. I know several people that have ignored fire evacuation orders and saved their homes instead. No fire department is going to tell people to fight the fire because they don't know people's individual situations. Shelter and place orders are another funny one. I have a lot of fond memories ignoring shelter in place orders hiking and camping in…

> Shelter and place orders are another funny one. I have a lot of fond memories ignoring shelter in place orders hiking and camping in the wilderness during covid. I was thinking more about sheltering from tornados and hurricanes.

I think you have confused ignoring the government orders with "doing the opposite of what the government says"

For example at different times I have went to my basement during while the tornado sirens where going off, and other times I have stood outside looking at the clouds...

Why because I took the governments recommendation, added my own information from various weather sources, radar, and decades of experience and formulated my personal risk at that moment

Re: Maui residents who disobeyed barricades survived fires

#120

Post by stuff4ben » Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 9:51 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #54

stuff4ben wrote: post #2

With the level of incompetence being shown by officials, I think it's not too far fetched to consider jail time for them. They'll plead ignorance of course, but there were warnings and these deaths are on them.

So, you're going to jail people for following procedures, because the outcome was bad? Are you also going to jail people for not following procedures, if the outcome turned out to be bad?

You seem to have a problem comprehending what I said. I said "with the level of incompetence being shown by officials". It has nothing about following procedure. It's the ignoring of warning signs and the willful disregard to prepare for windstorms like this. So yes, I want to jail top-level officials who could have done more to prevent this (government as well as those in charge of Maui Electric). Not the low-level workerbee who just setup a barricade.