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Corpses Floating in the Waters of Despair (Part Two) -
The Lahaina Firestorm of Anger and Grief
By KEITH MCHENRY
The Hawaii State Department of Education has reported that 2,025 students remain unaccounted for in the Lāhainā public school system. - August 29, 2023
The floating corpses of Lāhainā mark an even more disturbing story of corporate plunder disguised as another natural disaster - a new chapter in disaster capitalism.
The fire swept through the historic community of Lāhainā in 17 minutes. A web of coincidences suggests America’s most deadly fire wasn’t an accident.
The alarms were not sounded, the water to the town was shut off, and motorists were blocked by the police from leaving. Oddly the new chief of police was also the lead investigator of the Las Vegas massacre.”No stranger to tragedy, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier led response to the 2017 Vegas massacre” screams a USA Today headline on August 15.
It was the first day of school and students were sent home because of the high winds adding to the confusion. The trauma of not knowing what happened to two thousands children is haunting.
Are the officials incompetent or could there be something else going on? This is a question I hear often from people in Maui.
“The sirens…are used primarily for tsunamis. And that’s the reason why many of them are found, almost all of them are found, on the coastline,” MEMA Administrator Herman Andaya told reporters suggesting people wouldn’t see the flames and smoke and would run towards the fire thinking it was a tsunami. “I was not there that night,” Andaya said. ”I was on Oahu attending a conference. As it turns out many people tasked with emergency response on Maui were in Oahu at the time.
Maui News posted ”The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency’s website says the all-hazard siren system can be used for “both natural and human-caused events, including tsunamis, hurricanes, dam breaches, flooding, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, terrorist threats, hazardous material incidents and more.’”
A dispute over water rights has been reported as the reason water was cut off just as it was needed to stem the flames. Honolulu Civil Beat reports “According to accounts of four people with knowledge of the situation, M. Laleo Manuel, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner and DLNR’s deputy director for water resource management, initially balked at West Maui Land Co.’s requests for additional water to help prevent the fire from spreading to properties managed by the company.”
Manuel claimed in videos on social media that he wanted West Maui Land to get permission from a taro, or kalo, farm located downstream from the company’s property.
Many in Maui also question why the police blocked streets preventing people from leaving. Video after video posted by survivors show them freaking out that the police wouldn’t let them out to safety. Many abandoned their vehicles and jumped into the ocean to escape.
Associated Press posted this story on August 24, “As flames tore through a West Maui neighborhood, car after car of fleeing residents headed for the only paved road out of town in a desperate race for safety.”
“And car after car was turned back toward the rapidly spreading wildfire by a barricade blocking access to Highway 30.”
“One family swerved around the barricade and was safe in a nearby town 48 minutes later, another drove their four-wheel-drive car down a dirt road to escape. One man took a dirt road uphill, climbing above the fire and watching as Lahaina burned. He later picked his way through the flames, smoke and rubble to pull survivors to safety.”
“But dozens of others found themselves caught in a hellscape, their cars jammed together on a narrow road, surrounded by flames on three sides and the rocky ocean waves on the fourth. Some died in their cars, while others tried to run for safety.”
A Robin Muto of Hawaii Youth to Medicine said, “People are finding whole families in cars that are just charcoaled and fried.” She adds, “My best friend Michelle, her friend, her brother's family just... in the car. They find the car and they find mom and dad in the front seat and the three kids in the back. The other bad thing is that school was out that day that the fire raged through Lahaina so parents were at work and all the kids were at home so there's massive amounts of children who perished.”
Another resident from Lahaina said, "I’m from Lahaina too. I lived at Pauoa Street. I had to leave my car and run for my life. I was so scared and crying at the same time I got stuck”
As I witnessed after Katrina and Hurricane Sandy the American Red Cross was quick to launch a nation wide campaign to raise money. They arrived in Maui five days after the fire and survivors reported that much of their operation had left the island four days later. Unlike Sandy, Katrina or my experience after the Loma Prieta Earthquake where there was nearly no help at all from the Red Cross, their staff told the media that they are paying to put up over 6,000 people in hotels but many of those people are set to be evicted soon with no clear place to stay.
The bitter stench of decaying bodies twisted in the debris of Sandy engulfed my senses when I joined the Food Not Bombs volunteers on Staten Island. A lone Red Cross truck sat in the center of a huge sports field as we rushed to set up our hot meals.The only other Red Cross vehicle I came across in weeks of providing hot meals in Brooklyn and Staten Island was one blocking a bridge to the Far Rock-a ways posing for the media. Once they left, the long line of citizen-organized first responders rushed into action. We set up across from a FEMA station and provided their employees with food along with the lines of local people whose homes had been swamped.
According to local reports, FEMA set up their facilities on August 16, but even before they organized their offices, efforts to deliver aid by boat were blocked by FEMA staff as was the case when our volunteers attempted to deliver supplies to the survivors of Katrina.
The head of FEMA, Deanne Criswell told the residents of Maui that they shouldn’t be expecting anymore financial aid any time soon. “There are currently no plans to send more than the $700 that’s already been sent.”
A local said , “FEMA was too busy blocking supplies coming in and turning around civilian boats attempting to bring essential items like food and insulin in and the Maui City Council was too busy holding press conferences letting everyone know they wanted to buy the land. They were also making secret deals with developers during this time.”
She recorded this statement soon after the fire: “Insulin was boated in and it got turned away by FEMA on the shoreline”
“So I went out to Lahaina yesterday and I thought that I should just update the world on what FEMA is doing or what's going on because I just saw that they posted a website to defend themselves against the rumors. But I went out to Lahaina yesterday to help and talked to OneMaidHub from a Native Hawaiian and they got insulin from a private sector.”
An indigenous Lahaina local told investigative reporter Jeremy Loffredo working with Grayzone that she lost her house, pets, medicine and cash savings. She can't get a call back from FEMA and has yet to see any type of US aid relief. “Joe Biden should keep his insulting $700 because of the "gazillions" he's sending to Ukraine.”
A few weeks before the fire a homeless man from Hilo called seeking food and he also expressed anger that we could send billions of dollars to Ukraine while we are going hungry here in the United States. I receive over a dozen calls a day from people seeking food and one or more express that same anger at our dropping a billion dollars at a time to help Ukraine while we can’t even help our own people.
Lahaina fire survivor Christine Borge was angry when she spoke at the August 22, 2023, before the council members at the Maui County Council meeting held in the Kalana O Maui Building. Her moving 3 minute testimony ties so much about this together.
One reason I was moved to transcribe her testimony was her statement that she was a “forced American” as I have worked with the indigenous Hawaiian community for years and I found she reflected the anger many feel at having been occupied by the United States. The fact that the first capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii was Lāhainā has only added to this anger.
“Hello my name is Christine Borge. I guess you could say I am a kupuna. I am 61. Was living on Eighth Street when it happened. I walked away with nothing accept my dog. I’ve been a part of the human experience ever since. First we were in Maui Prep. They passed out toilet paper because they wouldn’t let us use the bathroom. I guess they think we look like leprosy people to them because of our dark skin and we went to Baldwin High, now I am at Swirl Lahaina.
"We need help because we’re being told by people from the mainland culturally insensitive to fill out papers that will give the America which I am a forced American. I am not a proud American, I am forced to be American in Hawaii. You’re telling us to fill out this paperwork so you can give us the least amount of money. All I have had is $700. FEMA is fighting with SBA. I walked out yesterday because I am hearing conflicting stories about what paper I should fill out."
Christine Borge also expresses her displeasure at the way FEMA and the Red Cross were treating the working class. I recall seeing a member of the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors, Tom Hsieh, standing at the entrance of the Moscone Center a day after the 1989 earthquake yelling “good homeless upstairs, the others go to the basement.” I had the impression the “good homeless” were those made homeless by the quake. A few days later the center was cleared for Mac World, the good homeless with Marina addresses were given free rooms at luxury hotels and the bad homeless were driven to a military ship docked near the Bay Bridge.
Borge continued, “We need meetings in Lāhainā. So many people, my employees there of Filipino ancestry. You know, they are Filipino, they don’t know how to fill out these papers. Four out of five of us have lost our homes they are burned to the ground. We are only being told to stand in this line and sign here. What are we signing? Who is it benefiting? Us or America? That’s what I want to know."
Borge shared a common perspective that this was a deliberate act designed to make way for a kind of “Smart City” where every movement or purchase is linked to an AI facilitated data base linked with satellites. There is some evidence she has a point.
“And I want to know when we get to go back to our home in Wahine? Maybe it's gone but for reasons I don’t want to discuss we need to go back there. Are you going to just scrape it all away and say it's a disaster zone and America is going to get what they want, a Satellite City, because this was planned years ago. It’s now happening and all the poor people, the homeless the hardworking people of the hotels, the kupuna, we lost everything so you could have your Satellite City.
“This isn’t fair. I feel like I was used. I feel like crap on the ground. This is not right and we should not be treated this way. We are in a hotel, we have no communication. I can not watch the news. I don’t know what is going on. I just happened to see on Facebook there is a meeting here. We couldn’t even have our pastor come in and ask us if we need prayer in the very beginning but Oprah could come in. Who is she? Who is she? They say, oh she knows the governor. We didn’t need her in there in Baldwin High. Get her out.
“We also don’t need people like Cana Shekee(sp) telling tourists don’t come to Maui because some of us, thousands of us work in the hotel industry. They pay our mortgage, they give us our medical, the medical besides the county is pretty good for somebody old like me. So don’t tell tourists don’t come to Maui because you are not speaking for us, the working people. You are speaking for yourself.”
The state of Hawaii claimed tourism provided nearly 80% of the income for Maui.
“Tourists come, we love you we have aloha. You gave us money through your donations, we are not saying don’t come. Come, we are saying come because you will be helping us, the lower people, the grains of sand of Maui is what we are. We are not the ones living up in Launiupoko. Not one of those houses burn. Puamana is still there Lahaina Shores is still there. Everything beyond Civic Center is there. But the homes where we were working, where we were scraping, where we have less than a thousand dollars a month to pay for our basic needs of gas and food.”
Her final statement was posted all over social media by local people who agreed with her position.
“We busted our ass and this is what we get. Nobody called us. Our phones didn't work from five in the morning. The fire was not 10 o'clock when I went to work. The fire was still there. There was no water. Tell me if that's that's coincidence. No water, no warning. And everybody talking about the Satellite City before the fire. Lahaina gonna be the first satellite city.
“Well hey, Jeff Bezos, you got what you wanted. Oprah, you got what you wanted. And the guy who owns the night, you got what you wanted. Fuck us all over. That's what happened. We need help in Lahaina. Who's going to come now and ask us, can I pray for you, Auntie? Thank you. Can I help you with your paperwork? Because all we got so far was $700, and we don't know who to call or anything. It's culturally insensitive in that zone.”
Native Hawaiians have been refusing to sell their properties in Lāhainā frustrating large developers. A day after the fire real estate speculators started flooding residents making offers on their property.
CBS News posted on August 28th, “Maui resident Goldean Lowe, who owns a home in Napili just north of Lahaina, told CBS MoneyWatch she has been solicited by five separate entities offering to buy her house, which was not affected by the wildfires.”
The report continues, “Lowe said she was "dismayed and disturbed" by the tone of the emails that arrived in her inbox shortly after the fires had scorched the area. One offer came from an individual identifying himself as "part of a small group of real estate Investors who buy homes in and around Lahaina.”
This has added fuel to the belief by many that the reason the water was turned off, the alarm was never activated, and the escape routes were blocked by the police was to pave the way for outside developers to profit from this prime location and open the way for the long promised Satellite City.
A press statement from the Governor’s office announced,”Hawaii's second Voluntary Local Review (VLR), presented by Governor Josh Green, M.D., to the United Nations (UN) during the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development July 12, presents a good news/bad news scenario. The review highlights progress on achieving the six Aloha+ Challenge goals, which are the state’s local implementation of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), and clearly defines what is lacking.” This has also sparked suspicion that the fire was arson and that the failure to provide even minimal emergency response was designed to remake Lāhainā into the Sustainable Development Goals Smart City program.
The press statement notes that Governor Green represented Hawaii at two key events at the 2023 United Nations High-Level Political Forum, the only U.S. state leader to do so.
The SDGs are the invention of global corporations to provide an attractive face for their exploitation of the Earth and its beings.
One journalist I respect on the subject of the Sustainable Development Goals is Cory Morningstar. “SDGs are emerging markets. They are overseen by World Economic Forum (partnered w/ UN, June 13 2019).” She directed me to a report in the Stanford Social Innovation magazine. “Not surprisingly, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which gives away six times more money than the next largest global funder we studied, tops the roster with just over 500 SDG-aligned big bets (about 60 percent of the bets in our database), totaling nearly $20 billion.” A big bet is defined as” philanthropic ‘big bets’ that aim to speed progress on specific social issues, such as pediatric AIDS or quality education.”
BlackRock has been marketing UN SDG- aligned private equity co-investment fund to both institutional and individual investors in Europe called the “BlackRock Future Generations Opportunities” according to a March 9 article in NewPrivate Markets.
In this one program alone they are targeting 25 to 35 investments over a four-year period and has a minimum investment ticket for investors of 125,000 Euros expecting to raise over 1 billion Euros in four years. SGD is a good investment for those seeking more wealth.
Another reason there is so much suspicion about the reason for America's most deadly fire is that the governor had issued an emergency order weeks before the emergency and only a week after he spoke before the United Nations. On July 17 Governor Josh Green issued an emergency proclamation on housing eliminating protections against speculation.
Hawaii News Now wrote, “But some, including Sierra Club of Hawaii Executive Director Wayne Tanaka, worry that the proclamation will compromise environmental and cultural laws while not addressing affordable housing.”
The 2015 post, “The New Smart Grid in Hawaii: JUMPSmartMaui Project is but one of many announcements that worried Maui residents causing them to worry that there could be another agenda and that the fire might not have been an accident.
The website starts,”Hitachi recently announced that it has begun operations on the demonstration site for the "Japan-U.S. Island Grid Project" (commonly referred to as the "JUMPSmartMaui") on the island of Maui, Hawaii, in collaboration with the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), Mizuho Bank, Ltd. and Cyber Defense Institute, Inc. An opening ceremony was held on Maui to coincide with the launch of site operations.”
Workers erected a $2.4 million dollar solid black fence around Lāhainā blocking out any view of the town. Joseph Toakala of Lahaina was arrested by Maui Police for ”violating rules and orders” from Mayor Richard Bissen by entering a “restricted area” when he tried to return to his property. Pressure by local fire victims finally made it possible for some to be escorted to their property.
The lack of transparency on the number of deaths, the origins of the fire, unclear reasons as to why the water was turned off, the blockading of escaping traffic, failure to sound the alarm and refusal by the state and federal government to provide help beyond a $700 check to each household has local people worried that the plan is to remove the poor and like the failed plans of New Orleans provide the reshaping of Maui for the benefit of Jeff Bezos, the other tech billionaires and their really not so sustainable Sustainable Development Goals program.
Mutual aid has once again come to the rescue. Free grocery and clothing markets have sprung up.
The Maui Food Not Bombs volunteers share stories of the police shutting down a church group sharing meals with the survivors. Just as we experienced after Katrina and Sandy, the Red Cross was of little help and FEMA interfered with local relief efforts. The volunteers with Oahu Food Not Bombs activists have also provided support, gathering supplies flying them too Maui. The fact that the authorities have abandoned the survivors should concern everyone.
So why are we are not seeing news of the lost 2,025 students? Is there an agenda the authorities are trying to conceal?
One survivor reported that she spent hours swimming through the corpses. By the time she was rescued most of those around her who were alive had drowned.
The working people of Maui are floating in an ocean of grief and they love their community.
Food Not Bombs providing food in Lāhainā.
PHOTO CONTRIBUTED FROM FOOD NOT BOMBS
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