The warning sirens are engrained and trained for tsunamis and volcano eruptions. They aren't really designed or tested each month as wildfire danger warnings. They get ripped every month but no one ever associated them with wildfires. It's just outside of the training. You rage those and every person thinks it's time to head to high ground with a tsunami or missle attack or something else that we hear about all of the time out on the islands. You rip those sirens, and it would've created an even bigger cluster ****. Again, it's supposed to be all all danger response system but that's not how they train on it once a month. It's an engrained part of the island life: siren = higher ground. You can't just pivot that engrained mental training and behavioral training to use on other things wo creating mass confusion. That criticism is the one that doesn't compute if you've stayed on the islands for an decent amount of time. Maybe that's something they change in the future, but I can only imagine, if those sirens went off, it'd have been a cluster **** island wide and made first responding even harder w the increased traffic.
The one thing I will say is that if the sirens had sounded, more people probably would've gone outside and seen this thing coming before it was directly on top of them, but I'm not sure that outweighs the hysteria it would've probably started. I'm glad I didn't have to make that decision man. I'm sure they're having to second guess that now and that really stinks.
The thing that really hurt was the phone service going down so early in Lahaina. The alerts they were sending weren't getting delivered to the part of the island that needed them and they didn't know it for a couple of hours. I'm not sure how but that was a huge factor. They thought they were doing what they could but things weren't being delivered and they didn't know it.
Here's exactly what the state says to do when you hear a siren:
"When a siren tone is heard other than a scheduled test, tune into local Radio/TV/Cable stations for emergency information and instructions by official authorities. If you are in a low laying area near the coastline; evacuate to high grounds, inland, or vertically to the 4th floor and higher of a concrete building. Alerts may also come in form of a Wireless Emergency Alert."
The Wireless Emergency Alerts are what wasn't being delivered. You'll see that if you can't get to a radio to find out why, you get to higher ground or a higher floor. Training people when they hear a siren to move inland or to higher ground or a higher floor wouldn't of helped much in this instance.
