My understanding is there is one road in and one road out at Lahaina and if the one road out is unavailable then what you need is the safest possible refuge. In a situation like that here that's what we'd do - send people to the safest place.
There is one main road out of Lahaina going north and are there two main roads out of Lahaina going south including a bypass road that the authorities in their "wisdom" closed off. Front Street, on the other hand, is a 15 mph one lane in each direction tourist trap. The fire was spreading due west, the 60+ mph winds were blowing the fire due west, and Front Street in the westmost street in Lahaina. As I said before, just about any fucking road would have been better than directing everyone into what became an inferno parking lot. Sure, the most intelligent people abandoned their cars and took refuge in the ocean, but all of those who dutifully followed the "evacuation" "plan" as the authorities directed them to perished.
But its also why in a place like Lahaina in those conditions if Australian rules and procedures were being followed we'd recommend everyone leave town for the day and take their most prized possessions, all important documents and hard drives etc and at least a few changes of clothes in the hope that that night its safe to come home.
Yes, this is what the fire chief who lived there did with his family himself. But for some reason, this was not advised for the general population. Why not?
Same thing in Lahaina to an extent. Which is why the water failure wasn't such a bad thing. Those fire fighters would have done more good helping evacuations than trying to put out that fire.
The authorities effectively prevented any effective evacuation by directing residents to an inferno death trap parking lot.
In the 2019 fires in Australia there were many cases of towns. camping grounds etc etc being hit by fire and the people in those towns heading to the beach and then into the water cos there was no where else to go and the escape routes had been cut by fire.
In this case, the three escape routes were not cut off by the fire, but instead they were arbitrarily cut off by the authorities.
To me that response makes sense but it also fits with the idea that no one really knew what the fuck was going on and people made bad decisions that seemed good at the time based on the information they had.
See, this is what shows that you know nothing about Lahaina, and thus you should refrain from commenting on this. Anybody who had ever been to Lahaina would instinctively know that Front Street is the very last road you would want to be on were you to have to evacuate town. It's the slowest road. It's the most congested road. It's the road you take only if you want to hug the coast while you cruise through a tourist trap at less than 10 mph with traffic lights and tourist crosswalks every 100 feet.
This happens in disaster situations all the time. You might think there is malice but really its just lack of intel or information about what' the situation is and in many cases whatever info people have is wrong or out of date within minutes, especially with a fast moving fire and unpredictable wind conditions.
I have no idea whether this was done out of malice or just out of rank incompetence. But come on. Why can't we even know who made this patently moronic decision or on what basis they made it? Why are you preemptively using the 9/11 "fog of war" excuse for these idiots who are certainly responsible for the deaths of at least scores of people?
You can drive past a 10 foot high flame at the side of the road and be okay, it'll get warm but you'll be fine if the flame front is less than 50m long. But if the wrong gust of wind hits you could get cooked. And it might happen in such a way that the cars in front of and behind you are fine you were just unlucky.
Why wouldn't this issue apply double to Front Street, which is exactly where the 60+ mph winds were directing the fire?
If you're a cop with no real experience of fires you probably wouldn't know this and you might think that 10 foot flame is an immediate threat to any car on that road. Inexperienced cops make decisions like that, its one of the reasons in Australia at fire emergencies fireys outrank cops and they do what they're told.
Supposedly, the cops at the scene claimed that they were just following orders. But nobody has ever explained whose orders or what the supposed rationale for these idiotic orders was. Instead, we get these exact sort of 9/11 "fog of war" bullshit non-explanations.
You do know that the people who got out of there with their cars and most precious valuables were the exact people who evacuated using the logical evacuation routes that the cops were ordered to close for no reason? Right?
