steve, thank you for being with us, first of all, very early for you there. a lot of blame being thrown around, what s the latest on both the recovery efforts and the investigation into why this got as bad as it did? ali, we ll start with the investigation. the governor promising accountability last night. that comes two days after the top emergency management official in maui resigned, citing health reasons. there have been mounting criticism ever since that fire started, specifically centered on why those emergency sirens were never sounded. one of the most sophisticated emergency sirens systems in the world. that emergency manager responded, before he resigned, at defending his decision not to sound the sirens, saying that, essentially, they re mostly used for tsunami warnings. he was worried that people would actually go toward the fire, which was burning up toward the mountains. so, now, the attorney general is set to hire a third party or
it comes just one day after defending his decision not to sound warning sirens as wildfires swept through the town of lahaina. he argued the sirens are usually for tsunami warnings where residents are trained to seek higher ground, which in this case he believed would have brought them closer to danger. elsewhere, it s still unclear if former president donald trump will be on stage the first gop primary debate next week, this coming wednesday in milwaukee, but one long time republican operative is urging him to show up. trump posted a rant on the debate on truth social yesterday. he again implied that he would not that he would be a no-show, but he stopped short of actually answering the question writing in part, quote, many people are asking whether or not i ll be doing the debates. i m the leading the runner-up whoever that may be by 50 points. people know my record, one of the best ever, so why would i
the entire marina, including th boats inside, go up in flames there was no real route to go north or south towards the mountains. the only escape was to get in the water. . gary savage jumped off the break wall with dozens of others spending the next eight hours in the water before being rescued. i don t know, man. i would say dumb luck. really just feel lucky and like this family had just seconds to evacuate, but maui never activated its emergency siren system. there was no emergency sounds. they did not sound off the tsunami warnings. reporter: officials refused to say why. many died in their cars trying to escape. she jammed her car in there trapping her inside and the car next to her burst into flame. reporter: the search for victims continues with just 3% of structures inspected by cadaver dogs. countless remain unaccounted
reporter: this was kind of like the worst situation possible. we ve heard from officials that those sirens are equipped to go off. they did not. they did have some radio and broadcast warnings but for a lot of people, the power was already off earlier this day so even if that siren had gone off, a lot of people would not have known what to do. think about this, andrea. when that siren goes off, usually it s for tsunami warnings so for a lot of people, they would have gone inland and ran straight into the fire. it was a really tough situation. and there are still a lot of answers about what went wrong and what could have been done differently to try to save more lives but again, the fire ran through there so quickly a lot of people couldn t do much. andrea? dana griffin. thank you. hunter biden, the fallout. what the president s son s attorney has to say about the case and whether a trial is actually not inevitable. you re watching andrea mitchell
turn on television reports for tsunami warnings and hurricanes. [siren] the state s emergency management agency says the all hazard siren system can be used for natural and human caused events including wildfires. it s so hard, very hard. as families hope loved ones will be found, search crews need help identifying the remains of those unaccounted for, asking relatives for d.n.a. swabs. the remains we re finding is through a fire that melted metal. we have to do rapid d.n.a. to identify them. there s also the challenge of finding housing for the thousands left homeless. lahaina was really small, nice, historical place and it s gone. first class action lawsuit already filed claiming hawaii s electric companies ignored warnings and kept power lines on during dangerous fire conditions. one company says it s too early to know the exact cause and who is to blame. hawaii s governor is promising answers and redemption.