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Us, the focus is, there is still a huge recovery effort. we are talking about looking for loved ones, with the casualty counts that could definitely go up from here. really going out there and recovering, assessing the damage and the lost homes and businesses and the entire community. so a lot of questions, but right now we have some very big arms that we have to wrap around our community, that is absolutely suffering and many still don t even know the fate of our loved ones and they are still looking for them. and just briefly, as a congresswoman, what would you like to see the federal government do to try to help states like hawaii and the other states we have seen affected by wildfires, continue to adapt to these disasters and the effects we are seeing from climate change? absolutely. you can ask anyone who lives here it doesn t take a hurricane to bring down utility poles, to bring waves over roadways and take out bridges and roadways, we are seeing this all the time throughout t ....
Wildfires that in this case literally trapped a community between the fire and the ocean. so it was absolutely catastrophic. the thing is, after we are done really supporting this community, supporting ourfamilies and friends, assessing the damage, there is a lot of work to be done in terms of making sure this absolutely never happens again. if we think back in our history, hurricane lane did the same thing but it didn t come after a town, it took out large acreages of dry grass but we have to remember the way our towns are configured, we are along the coastline, this can happen again and so we need to have as many take away the lessons learned from this, because it absolutely must not, must not happen again, it is absolutely tragic. it was a perfect storm of catastrophic events, but that is not going to bring any lives back, that s not going to bring any homes back or businesses back. so bottom line, we have to be better next time and we have two. crosstalk there was a warning system ....
Reports and officials there that the sirens didn t go off. do you have any sense of what might have happened and whether residents were given enough time, enough warning to get to safety? every person living in hawaii, we are familiar with those warning sirens the beginning of every month you hear them go off at noon, like clockwork, to test it out, to make sure it works. so there is going to be a lot, there are a lot of unanswered questions into why that warning signal did not go out. what kind of failsafes do we have to have, if in fact the situation is that it burnt down? we know that a lot of alerts went out through cellphones, but unfortunately from the day prior as we know, the cellphones were actually out. so these are things that we have to create redundancies for, to make sure at the end of the day every person who needs to be warned to get to safety can get the alerts that they need. so there is still a lot of outstanding questions and i can tell you right now for many of ....
And things coming in. i just got the plane from san francisco and i will tell you that on the belt with the luggage was literally two or three large boxes taped up that said maui relief donations . and so, just overwhelming response of people giving what they can, supporting people in ways that they can, it is just inspiring, it is moving, but it does also speak to the great need that exists right now in the community in maui. there is a lot of need and there has been a lot of damage, and now tragically we are hearing that this is officially now hawaii s deadliest natural disaster as well. in your mind and what you have seen and heard, how prepared do you think the state was for an event like this? you know, when it comes to hurricane season we worry about the hurricanes. we don t think about winds whipping up dry conditions and red flag warnings and creating wildfires. ....