OPINION: Lahaina, The Government and Why Fires Can Have Friends.

Sub­mit­ted by George McClel­lan

The flames that destroyed the sleepy vil­lage of Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii are almost too awful to con­tem­plate. But, weve seen it before. The known death toll has already risen over one hun­dred peo­ple who were burned alive because they had nowhere to escape to and lit­tle warn­ing of the fast approach­ing con­fla­gra­tion. Over a thou­sand more peo­ple are still unac­count­ed for and pre­sumed dead. We saw it before over the past cou­ple years in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia when uncon­trolled for­est fires sped through unkempt for­est ground cov­er before sweep­ing through whole towns and vil­lages leav­ing thou­sands home­less and many near­ly des­ti­tute. But, unlike Lahaina these peo­ple had avenues of escape via auto­mo­bile. The ques­tion now is, how did the Lahaina con­fla­gra­tion start, and who will tell us the truth? First, I do not rely on gov­ern­ment to pro­vide truth­ful answers or solu­tions. Thats a giv­en!

Lahaina was an old vil­lage, once a whal­ing sta­tion in its day and a remote place that to get there you had to want to go there. Then it was dis­cov­ered by the boat­ing crowd as a quite place for those who sought iso­la­tion and inex­pen­sive liv­ing, if one was sat­is­fied liv­ing on fruits and nuts. It was a no frills exis­tence but it slow­ly start­ed to grow. I vis­it­ed the town years ago when I lived and worked in Hawaii so I saw that one could live there hap­pi­ly with oth­er peo­ple of a like mind with­out the need to embrace the fruits of advanced civ­i­liza­tion. But, the old town was made of wood, old wood, wood that had cured for cen­turies to a lev­el of dry­ness that sim­ply could­nt resist burst­ing into flame instant­ly the approach­ing fire reached igni­tion point. For wood, thats very low and explains why the wind dri­ven fire, fueled by old wood, spread so rapid­ly before peo­ple could real­ize the dan­ger and flee. Fires are pre­ventable they are also cleans­ing. We take sim­ple, feel good mea­sures like pur­chas­ing a fire extin­guish­er or two for inte­ri­or fires but we neglect the forest­ed and brush cov­ered out of doors which, when set alight, sweep all before it includ­ing our homes. Despite the ugli­ness, fires are restora­tive.

In the case of Lahaina, insur­ance com­pa­nies should start exert­ing them­selves by throw­ing their own teams of pro­fes­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors into the breach, deter­mine the phys­i­cal facts and do not dis­sim­u­late the answers when giv­ing pub­lic expla­na­tions. We have come to expect FEMA, because they are a bureau­crat­ic fed­er­al gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion, to pro­vide answers. But, they are Joe Bidens FEMA and there­fore cant be trust­ed to speak the truth. Its very sim­ple, we have been trained to believe gov­ern­ment experts, and not out­side experts like the Insur­ance com­pa­nies can pro­vide. If you ques­tion that, just remem­ber Dr. Fau­ci, whose pon­tif­i­ca­tions on dead­ly vac­cines were uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed even as the deaths by injec­tions grew, while real med­ical experts telling the truth were pil­lared for speak­ing that truth. By the way, its report­ed Fau­ci made $300 mil­lion dol­lars doing so.

There are sev­er­al points where one starts when seek­ing answers to fire caus­es. First, Arson? Were aware that Islam­ic Jihadists promised to set Amer­i­ca ablaze, but Lahaina, of no mil­i­tar­i­ly or com­mer­cial sig­nif­i­cance does­nt make sense, but arson by a nut case could answer the bill. Was it an acci­dent, a tipped over lantern or cook­ing fire or a care­less smok­er? We get clos­er to those pos­si­bil­i­ties because winds from a hur­ri­cane 400 miles south were blow­ing pret­ty hefti­ly. An out­doors smok­er can be exclud­ed as can cook­ing fires and lanterns. Lahaina had elec­tric­i­ty after all, but here we must turn our eyes to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­mer­cial or gov­ern­ment neglect. Did weak pow­er lines fray under the bat­ter­ing of the mod­er­ate hur­ri­cane dri­ven winds and spark the fire? Were the Tsuna­mi warn­ing sirens inop­er­a­ble because of pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance neglect? There were sug­ges­tions the water lines were not ful­ly charged; was the fire depart­ment up to snuff in train­ing and equip­ment? Anoth­er ques­tion that must be answered is why did so many boats at anchor burst into flame adding their own fuel to the con­fla­gra­tion ren­der­ing escape by sea near­ly impos­si­ble? So many ques­tions and when the gov­ern­ment starts answer­ing them, as we have come to expect with KJP style dri­v­el from the White House, then we can guess that gov­ern­ment is try­ing to hide some­thing that con­demns Blue State offi­cial­dom.

Cat­a­stroph­ic events like these are always fol­lowed by fin­ger point­ing with vic­tims and lawyers lin­ing up look­ing for deep pock­ets to whom they can attach blame for finan­cial relief. The Home Insur­ance indus­try must be near finan­cial col­lapse by now. Be aware of the com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties that have devel­oped here. Expect the oppor­tu­ni­ty vul­tures of par­adise com­mer­cial­ism to swoop in and offer, at dimes on the dol­lar, to buy whats left of Lahaina to cre­ate anoth­er trop­i­cal des­ti­na­tion for the wealthy. Its prob­a­bly already start­ed. Hawai­is gov­er­nor has already promised Lahainas res­i­dents that that will not hap­pen. Dont bet on it. Theres not that many res­i­dents left. Always fol­low the mon­ey! Be assured that Lahaina will nev­er return to the once sleepy, quite, out of the way vil­lage it was. It will soon be snatched up by builders of upscale hotels and con­dos and Lahainas poor, like Amer­i­c­as home­less every­where will sim­ply have to move on. Thats just the way social­ist gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial inter­ests work togeth­er, to their prof­it, not ours.

Remem­ber, free­dom is the goal, the Con­sti­tu­tion is the way. Now, go get em! (17Aug23)