Maui County attorney refutes Aug. 8 findings

Maui County’s Corporation Counsel Victoria J. Takayesu on Friday night issued a “clarifications and response” to details contained in the first phase of findings from the Attorney General Office’s investigation into the Aug. 8 fires that killed 101 people and left 8,000 homeless.

The reason for the rebuttal Friday was because Maui County officials did not receive a copy of the findings from the state contractor, the Fire Safety Research Institute, until Wednesday when it was released to the public, Takayesu said.

The state Attorney General’s Office report Wednesday included that the head of the Maui County Emergency Management Agency was off island and delayed returning despite the crisis and that a breakdown in communications left authorities in the dark and residents without emergency alerts. The office’s report also showed that there were communications questions involving Hawaiian Electric on whether power lines were deenergized.

The report was the second of two released this week into the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century. A report released Tuesday by the Western Fire Chiefs Association detailed the challenges facing the Maui Fire Department.

Attorney General Anne E. Lopez told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Friday night that she welcomed the response from the county.

“We welcome Maui County supplementing the facts. Maui County has provided much of the information requested. Any additional information they provide will further inform the analysis that will be provided in Phase 2,” Lopez said in a statement.

In the county’s rebuttal, the first issue it cited with the Attorney General’s Office’s findings was an entry on Page 248 of the 375-page report, having to do with the issuance of an emergency proclamation.

The entry referred to the moment when former Maui Emergency Management Agency Administrator Herman “Andaya relayed to (Paul) Coe (acting administrator in the Emergency Operations Center of MEMA that day) that Mayor (Richard) Bissen did not think it was necessary at that point to issue emergency proclamation.”

The “clarification” is, according to Takayesu, that Bissen “initially asked staff to start the process of drafting a County Emergency Proclamation at 9 a.m. on August 8th. County attorneys were working on it throughout the day, even as the Acting Governor was issuing the State’s first Emergency Proclamation.”

The state’s proclamation, signed at 3:20 p.m. Aug. 8, released “critical state and federal resources and funding streams.”

“The County Emergency Proclamation, on the other hand, allowed the suspension of portions of the Maui County Code that would be needed during the emergency response as it unfolded in following days,” Takayesu wrote. “The County Emergency Proclamation went into effect on August 8th and did NOT hamper the emergency response in any way by being signed at 8 p.m.”

The second issue highlighted by Takayesu was a “text message from Mayor Bissen to Herman Andaya: “Let’s stay on top of this. I’m coming back up after my Dr. appt.”

That was a reference to the Maui Emergency Management Agency’s timeline, which noted, “Andaya asked if Mayor is in the room; (Gaye) Gabuat (administrative assistant at MEMA) responded no.”

Takayesu’s clarification was that Bissen “did have a doctor’s appointment scheduled for that afternoon, but his secretary canceled his appointment as well as other meetings that day.”

“The Mayor was in the County building for the remainder of the day, with meetings, media interviews and briefings happening in the EOC, the 9th floor and other County offices throughout the day and into the next morning,” Takayesu wrote. “The Mayor was in and out of the EOC so he would have returned to the EOC on multiple occasions during the stated timeframe.”

The county also pushed back on the finding that MEMA personnel didn’t complete Incident Command Systems forms, which detail actions completed and assigned to personnel on duty.

Private attorneys contracted by the county, David Minkin and Jordan K. Inafuku, with McCorriston Miller Mukai MacKinnon LLP, told the Star-Advertiser in an interview that all the forms and data from the county’s Emergency Operations Center that appear in the findings were provided by the Maui Emergency Management Agency.

The county took issue with FSRI’s assertion that MEMA personnel didn’t log their attendance and activities on Aug. 8 through appropriate channels.

“The County produced hundreds of pages of sign-in sheets and (Incident Command System) forms, including those referenced in FSRI’s Report as informing its chronology. The report’s implication that MEMA did not produce relevant information is unfounded and illustrates some of the deficiencies of FSRI’s analysis to date,” Takayesu wrote. “The County has not withheld any information or documents to date, and the absence of a particular document does not evidence non-cooperation. To the contrary, the County has fully cooperated with FSRI’s investigation, including with respect to MEMA and its management of the EOC.”

Inafuku told the Star- Advertiser that the activity logs created by forms are “not something that assists with immediate response to an emergency.”

“It’s like documenting what you did during your shift,” Inafuku said. “With three different emergencies going on simultaneously and dozens of dozens of people in the EOC … the activity log has its place.”

The Attorney General’s Office’s report detailed that a deadly combination of high winds, power outages, communication failures and a lack of leadership from the Maui Emergency Management Agency created chaos during the wildfires.

As fires burned in Olinda, Kula, Pulehu and Lahaina, police officers and firefighters scrambled, amid rapidly deteriorating conditions, to evacuate homes and funnel panicked drivers to safety while fighting the flames.