hawaii electric company, accusing them of starting those deadly wildfires. the company already faces numerous negligence lawsuits, but this is the first to say that their utility wires caused that blaze. nbc s steve patterson is on the ground there. what more can you tell us? just that, chris, that their utility caused that fire, that it was the significant wind event and messages that were ignored about the possibility of maybe deenergizing those lines that came down in the wind, in dry brush, all of this was stated by the national weather service. it was really bad weather for fire, and caused those fires. not only that, but there was deepening allegations of negligence going back years that the it should have been hardened and stabilized, some of the routine maintenance issues were ignored. there was no automatic shutoff, that a lot of utilities carry in case of a wind event.
so they can safely shut off the power. the lawsuit, 48 pages, alleges that none of that was done ahead of the fire, and that simply the warnings from the national weather service went unheard, and so when you had that wind event with the dry brush, the energized lines that it sparked and caused the fire. they re saying there s $5.5 billion worth of damages. the electric company did respond saying that they feel sort of put off by the fact that this was done before the full investigation was complete. this of course is one of now 13 lawsuits. but this is the first one, as you mentioned, to fully sort of put the allegation out that that it was directly the utility and of course the only one of the county of maui, alleging negligence. steve patterson, thank you very much. an extraordinary experience to say the least. the first person to ever bail out a former u.s. president now
have loved ones who are missing. so as agony knowing maybe the worst that has happened but hoping that you will get a better result. here again comes another drop. in addition to the fire accident, sprinklers, we actually met a couple guys volunteers putting out hot spots with bottled water. sort of bush whacking through the dry brush. one actually burned a foot when he slid into still smoldering ash. so people understand here that there is a lot of action and sympathy happening in la lie in a, but this is an ongoing story and we ll stay on it for you. bill weir, cnn, maui. pentagon says it is focused to getting u.s. army private travis king back on to american soil after he crossed in to north korea last month. after weeks of silence, north korea has finally publicly confirmed that he is in fact in the country and says that he admitted to entering illegally.
i will tell you, growing up here in hawaii, anyone who lives here, every single month, we hear the warning sirens go off as a test. if you don t hear them in your neighborhoods, you know that something is wrong with them, so they get fixed. we rely on that system to keep us safe. you think of type of emergencies like wildfires, that should have been our first line of defense. these days, the alerts come on our cell phones, but we know there was no cell phone coverage in the area. so any alerts that would have gone through that system were not received. we clearly did not plan for redundancies to keep people safe. it s not like hurricane force winds are known for dry brush. we saw this before. we did not learn our lesson from
it is not like hurricane force winds, dry brush, or red flag conditions. we saw this before, and we did not learn our lesson. that brush fire could erupt as a result of churning hurricane winds. and we underestimated the lethality, the quickness of fire. in this situation, we have got to make sure that we do better. cnn s gloria from honolulu, we are hearing so many traumatic stories of survival and the rescue and recovery efforts are conditioning as well. yes, amara, rahel, just hearing that video, hearing those people s voices and seeing the damage, in the video, and the images, it is really helping to bring everything into focus, just how much damage and loss