In Maui, locals work to get around the bureaucrats' roadblocks on aid

The picture gets uglier and uglier from Maui, where a huge wildfire blew through and destroyed the historic royal town of Lahaina. Ninety-three people are dead -- burned in their cars trying to escape, killed by smoke or engulfing flames their homes, drowned offshore trying to flee, and only two have been identified. The governor says the toll will climb even higher. Searches are not complete, and 2,200 buildings are reduced to rubble. This is such a heartbreaking catastrophe.

The fires, though are mostly out and now that the bogus global warming blame is done, the next step is getting aid to the survivors.

Apparently that's not going well.

Information is sketchy, but it appears local efforts to help are being shut down, roadblocks are all over town, and only the feds and their longtime ally -- that's FEMA and the Red Cross -- are "permitted" providers of aid, according to reports.

This has prompted apparent scenes like this, of locals taking matters into their own hands:

 

 

Which rather sounds like the old 2005 Cajun Navy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as such efforts go, improvised help from locals with resources willing to help. 

(The real Cajun Navy is onhand, too, as this report shows, but they sound a bit institutionalized at this point, a little hands-off, like they have become a garden-variety NGO. All the same, they are the private sector, and they may nevertheless be helping. I don't want to claim they aren't.)

The more important story is that locals are trying to help other locals and seem to be thwarted -- by the very government that failed to protect them from the fire in the first place.

 

 

Here's a news story:

The main road to Lahaina, the Honoapiilani highway, was briefly re-opened to residents on Saturday, before quickly being closed again.

Hundreds of Lahaina residents have stayed in line on the highway anyway, hoping to be be allowed through.

Liz Germansky, who lost her home in the fire, is angry about the response. "The government's getting in the way of people helping," she says, sitting in that same traffic queue.

Another route, the Kahekili Highway, is open, but locals say it's far too dangerous to attempt that drive. The road - known simply here as "the backroad" to Lahaina - is barely wide enough for one car, has many hair-pin turns, and a steep drop-off.

"We can't drive this truck there. It's a cliff," said resident Ruth Lee who was stuck in traffic trying to bring supplies to her family that stayed behind.

...and more bureaucratic red tape:

Felicia Johnson, who owns a printing business in the city of Kahului, Maui, is organising a massive grassroots response to the disaster.

Her family is from the Lahaina area. She has amassed hundreds of pounds of donated supplies to bring in, but has been unable to shuttle them through the government checkpoint.

She says that pleading with authorities to let her enter with her donated goods is the hardest part for her emotionally - not the devastation she has witnessed while dropping off supplies."That's the part that I'm so wrecked on, is I got to keep begging you to come in to feed people."

Many of the docks in the area are too badly damaged or destroyed to bring in supplies by boat, Ms Johnson said. Some people that have made the journey have swum the supplies to the shore.

Some of the young men helping her load supplies blame government mismanagement and bureaucracy.

"Too many chiefs, not enough warriors," said Bradah Young, 25.

"Everybody is in charge but nobody is moving," said another man.

Here's a jeremiad from a podcaster addressing this in a post that making the rounds on the Internet:

 

 

Seems the government is not helping much, and the need is great. 

With a record like that, the government shouldn't be doing anything to stop local efforts to recover from the disaster. If they can't figure out quickly how to distinguish local efforts from bad actors, they need to turn this effort over to locals who can. A government that failed to protect the Maui people from fire has no business trying to interfere with their efforts to aid the needy and build themselves back.

Image: Twitter screen shot 

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