The Daily Signal - Why Rebuilding After Maui Fire Is Taking So Long

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

Cleanup after wildfires is inherently more difficult than recovery from other natural disasters, according to Brian Cavanaugh, a visiting fellow for Cybersecurity, Intelligence, and Homeland Security at The Heritage Foundation. Unlike a hurricane, which mainly creates wind and water damage, Cavanaugh says, fires damage the structural integrity of buildings and often leave dangerous chemicals behind.  “Wildfire rolls through a community, and you essentially lose everything all the way down to the foundation,” says Cavanaugh, who has former senior-level experience serving in the Department of Homeland Security, at the White House, and at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Now, you think once you've lost everything down to the foundation, start the rebuild process, but, everything as it burns leaves chemicals and other items on the ground. You've got to pick up the personal effects that are salvageable. [There are] a lot of environmental regulations involved with wildfire, so that all takes time.” Aug. 8 marked one year since a wildfire raged through Lahaina, Hawaii, on Maui. The fire took 102 lives and “destroyed more than 2,200 structures and caused about $5.5 billion in damages,” according to the U.S. Fire Administration.  Cavanaugh, a senior vice president at American Global Strategies, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain what led to the Lahaina fire and what the status of the rebuilding process is a year after the disaster.  Enjoy the show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Commissions fees and expenses may apply. Read the funds or ETF's prospectus before investing. Funds and ETFs are not guaranteed. Their values change and past performance may not be repeated. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, August 28. I'm Virginia Allen. One year ago, a massive fire broke out on the island of Maui, ravaging Lahaina, Hawaii,

and unfortunately and tragically taking both homes, property, and over 100 lives. So what exactly has changed in Lahaina since then? And how prepared is that community to prevent a repeat of such a tragedy? Brian Kavanaugh serves as a visiting fellow in border security and immigration at the Heritage Foundation and also served in the Trump administration. He visited Maui earlier this month and joins the show to explain what exactly the situation is on the ground there, how the cleanup is going, and how long it's going to take for Maui to return to some resemblance of normal. Stay tuned for my conversation with Brian Kavanaugh after this. Hey, it's Rob Bluey from The Daily Signal. Want to stay ahead of the curve on conservative news and analysis?

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Well, in addition to being a visiting fellow here at the Heritage Foundation, Brian Kavanaugh also serves as vice president and American global strategies. He's also former senior director of Homeland Security Affairs in the Trump administration. Brian, welcome back to the daily little podcast. It's great to have you here. Always a pleasure to join you, Virginia. You were recently in Maui. It has been a year since the Lahaina wildfires that just ravaged. That island took over 100 lives.

How does Lahaina look now a year after that fire? You know, it was interesting a year later to look down and see what a community looks like after a wildfire of the magnitude that they had. It was asphalt streets and ash everywhere. Very little progress in terms of rebuilding. It was important. So it drew me to ask a lot of questions. And I looked up, you know, how the government was portraying the recovery effort. And the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is like, we are having success.

we're ahead of schedule on the debris removal piece, which just goes to show you how long these recoveries really take. When we're talking about debris removal, they are claiming that they are hoping to be done with debris removal by the end of this calendar year. Okay. Long time. Over a year, just removing debris. Just to remove debris before we can even really start rebuilding people's homes, rebuilding businesses, kind of restoring assimilence to what the community was before. You've worked in crisis intervention. You've worked in wildfire, recovery. and cleanup and kind of handling that big government process before. Is the timeline of what we're seeing in Maui normal?

So I think the first thing everyone needs to understand is recovery from any disaster is protracted and longer than you'd expect. Look at any time you have to deal with your insurance company. It's not a smooth process. What was striking for Maui for me was seeing from what I viewed as a lack of progress. And then you start looking at what are the limiting factors. compared to a camp wildfire of 2018, you're not driving trucks in and driving debris out.

You're on an island. So you're bringing barges in, trucking to a barge, getting off the truck onto a barge, moving it to where it needs to go. The environmental regulations and controls are much more strict when you're operating on an island like Maui. So it's understandable that it's a long process, but I think just still stepping back a year later

and going, wow, we're not even turning the page and rebuilding, we're still cleaning. Have there been legitimate answers to how this happened? There's been a lot of speculation. I think, you know, early on, and we had a conversation where, you know, people speculate when there's an absence of authority on the issue. So you've seen a lot of conjecture. But I think what you have is while I was there, we noticed Maui was extremely dry.

Even more so, and I've been to Maui several times. Most of the island is brown with the exception of the east side of the island. Really? So, crunchy dry grass took several hikes. With the exception of a couple of sides of the mountains that are facing the wind where they get the clouds, everything was brown. You couple that with you have increased in population, increased demand on the electric grid. And I believe they were, you know, while I was there, the first time I was there, ever experienced brownouts where we were in Waikiki and we got a notification from the hotel that

due to surging demand, Hawaii Electric was blacking out and doing rolling blackouts through downtown Waikiki in the hotel district. So I think you have this high demand stress on the electric grid. They had extremely dry temperature or dry climate with all the brush had died off and was very dry. And then couple that with the winds. So sparks from the electric grid, very plausible, especially given the high demand. And the conditions just set themselves for.

everyone witnessed the fastest moving wildfire through a community where people had to run and jump in the ocean for protection. Have there been steps taken since then that you can see to prevent anything from this ever happening again in Lahaina? I think what you're seeing proactive steps from Hawaii Electric to manage load on the grid. That's why you probably had blackouts going through Waikiki. I think there's been a lot of investment in time being spent by Hawaii Electric and, in what happened and what their systems capable withstanding and how they're building for the future. Sadly, things like this are going to take time to address and mitigate. It's not a light switch you can flip overnight and fix the problem.

When you look at Lahaina and the opportunity presented through tragedy is an opportunity to build back with more resilience. So they should be looking at how do they put the roads into Lahaina. Evacuations were part of the reason so many people lost their lives that day. the inability to move people out of that community. So I think you have an opportunity to revisit the infrastructure in terms of transportation in and out. You have an opportunity to revisit the communications and electric grid. And with that, build homes that are more prepared, the building materials, perhaps, how they're spaced, how the yards are managed. And then commercially, I think that's going to be the longest thing to come back is the commercial businesses.

Yeah, yeah, we were talking just a moment ago that they're prioritizing. people's personal homes over commercial, which does make sense. Obviously, people need to be in homes so that then they can work in those commercial businesses. Has any of that rebuilding of people's homes restarted? And if not, where are those people living who lost their homes? So the rebuild process is in the very nascent phase, even for residential. One of the things, I think they are, for the beginning of this month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said they're 98% complete with debris removal around residences

and about 40% complete with commercial lots. the rebuild of homes should be beginning any moment. There are a couple that have been started, but the vast majority have not started. And where those people have been displaced to, they're living with relatives. I believe some are still in hotels. You have a couple that are in long-term housing in other islands, which then, again, you have to get those people back to their community, reestablish the footprint.

So I think, you know, that's one thing I would like to see more efficient and expeditious recovery efforts at all levels of government, not just from FEMA. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you think about post-Katrina. I mean, you'll still meet people in different states, and they say, oh, yeah, I moved here after Katrina and intended to go back, but just never did. There's still streets in New Orleans that are, the lots are empty.

Yeah. And here we are 20 years later. So sad. How's the tourism industry in Maui? Because obviously, I mean, that really drives their economy there. So for Maui, I think notable, little to no impact in Oahu. They seem to have been bounced back from COVID. In Maui seems to be doing very well.

That's kind of your beach resort towns that are pretty far. They're in the southern, southwest part of the island. But Lahaina is almost a ghost town. There's nothing there to support tourism. In fact, it's strictly cleanup effort. Okay. Brian, I was interested when we were speaking before we hit record here, you were explaining the difference in the cleanup for a fire versus a hurricane and other tragedies.

If you would explain, why is it? is more complicated. Absolutely. So a lot of times people think of federal disaster response and they tie it to. The most notable and easy to find are hurricane seasons. They happen every year. They're pretty predictable. And you're almost guaranteed to get a couple of federal responses out of those.

When you deal with cleanup from a hurricane, you're dealing with wind damage and storm surge. So flooding. And storm surge, the flood moves in. And as the tides change, storm moves out overseas, the storm surge recedes. And you're able to get in and you're dealing with just basically. flooding cleanup and maybe some wind damage. So structurally, you're not having to get engineers in to see the foundation and all the core components of the building are intact and can handle reoccupancy. What you're trying to do is prevent mold and get people's lives back together.

You look at a wildfire, and this is vastly different. Wildfire rolls through a community, and you essentially lose everything all the way down to the foundation. Now, you'd think, well, if you've lost everything down to the foundation, start the rebuild process, but everything as it burns, leaves chemicals and other items on the ground. You've got to pick up the personal effects that are salvageable. A lot of environmental regulations involved with the wildfire. So that all takes time. And for me, my experience was the 2018 campfires while I was at the National Security Council. And that for me, there's an expectation that you move as quickly as possible for citizens of the country and get to that place. And for me, that was a painful lesson

on just how long that can take and how tedious it can be. And caused us. to ask some serious questions at the National Security Council on do we have the most effective policy and programs in place at the federal level to encourage recovery in a timely manner. And how much of that is the job of the federal government versus the state governor or state legislature? How do they kind of work together to say, hey, you focus on doing this, we'll focus on doing this. Complex challenge, whether this is where it doesn't matter if it's a hurricane, earthquake or a wildfire, it's a complicated balance between the private sector with insurance companies. And then the motto that the Trump administration FEMA team really tried to orient around

was locally executed, state-managed, and federally supported disaster response and recovery. So what you really want to do is the local government is the closest to the community. And you want them kind of really driving the charge and leading any recovery efforts. And then the state government partners very closely with the federal government in terms of funding from FEMA, getting resources. State governments don't have access to that the federal government inherently has. Usually you're talking about tapping into the Department of Defense resources or these large-scale contracts that FEMA is able to hold that a state or local government can't secure to really help kind of drive the recovery. Yeah. Has that been the approach of the Biden administration as well?

Yes. So that type of, I'd argue, that's kind of been. the primary driver during my career in emergency management, but it was the first time you started hearing that phrase coined was in the last, like 2017, 2018. I think it was Brock Long at the time as the FEMA administrator was we're going to lead locally executed, state managed, federally supported. He's like, that's the order of importance. The most important people on the ground are the local community, local government, state government should support them, and then the federal government doesn't need to come in and claim a victory. They need to be supporting the other

two governments. So kind of right size and getting back to federalism. Yeah. Balance. That's right. When you were there, did you talk with any of the locals about like, hey, how are you guys doing? What's your perspective? Has the government done a good job in the locals perspective? So it was I spent probably in my family's opinion an inordinate amount of time asking those questions to the people who lived on the island. And there's a lot of interesting perspective. And I think the general consensus was they, and I think it goes to the fact that people don't realize how slow these recoveries are, that it was not quick enough. It's not quick enough. And I think that's a tell that for those policymakers in the homeland space need to kind of consider what are the different

ways we can find to make the recovery effort more expeditious. What are the choke points? What are the bottlenecks that slow it down? And I think that was something based on our personal experiences in the National Security Council at the time and working with FEMA and the other federal agencies that are part of that process was, are there fundamental shifts that we need to make? And then what of those policies require congressional legislation? So I think there's a big push, and it was 2018, it might have been 2019, the Disaster Recovery Reform Act was touted as a big bipartisan win. And I used to joke, it had a lot of small wins in it, but it was not the big win that kind of turned the aircraft carrier in terms of how we do business.

Yeah. I mean, can you really say, okay, in the case of the lineup fire, can you point to someone and say, well, the buck kind of stops with them? Or was it a multi-faceted really breakdown? So that one kind of broke down in phases. Yeah. I think the first phase and the immediate response to it is a local breakdown. Their resources became overwhelmed.

They didn't have the fire equipment fire personnel capable of meeting the issue they were confronted with. And that happens in every community because you can plan, you have to put, you have to, there's a risk tolerance that you accept when you build a fire department, build the law enforcement entities around it. There's a capability you're aiming to achieve. And I'm certain Maui achieved that. I don't think their plans incorporated, like a half an island wildfire that spread pushed right to the ocean. I would venture that was probably not conceptualized by them. But how they handled that, how they handled the evacuation was probably the first failure. I think the next failure inherently, again, we're just going to take that thing we talked about,

locally executed, state managed, federally supported. Your next breakdown was at the state level. And the governor was the first 48, 72 hours, which I used to tell people, when a disaster happens, the expectation cannot be the federal government's going to be there on hour zero. hour 24. I used to tell state emergency managers, really the expectation is going to be that the federal government is 72 hours to 96 hours out. That's when the bulk of the federal support can actually start to show up. Yeah. We give a false sense of hope because during the hurricane season, people see us there on the day that the storm's hitting, maybe a few days before. But you have

warning. Those are predictable events. You have seven to 10 days, heads up. There's a storm coming in Atlantic, and you can pre-position resources and assets, a wildfire, an earthquake. Those are the disasters that keep me up at night and wonder, are communities prepared? And do they have the tools in place to be able to handle that first 72 hours? And then, you know, stepping back and looking at like the forest through the trees, we have conflict going on in three theaters right now. You've got Russia and Ukraine. Iran is keeping the Middle East very warm. and China in the South China Sea with the Philippines and Taiwan are very active.

In the event that the U.S. military has to project force into one of those theaters, our national level capabilities on emergency management become very strained. A lot of the national plans rely on DOD to do key pieces of our response, and they will not be available if we have to project force in theater. It's a little worrisome. One of the efforts has been to build out a more robust private sector engagement and have more contingency contracts. So I know from at least my time that FEMA was well underway at the logistics level thinking through contracts in that way. And ensuring that I think the 2017 hurricanes kind of forced that hand when you had to create a bridge from Florida to Puerto Rico to help Puerto Rico get back up on its feet.

So I think that was eye-opening. and now as you sit in the midst of having geopolitical regions on fire, if FEMA's not worried about that, they should be. Yeah. So obviously after a tragedy, like the line of fire, that community can never go back to what it was. But when you look at the grand scheme of rebuilding, getting their tourism industry fully back up and running,

are we looking at two years, five years, two decades? What do you think? I think three to five years. Okay. Three would be optimistic. Five is probably more realistic. And I doubt the community in Lahaina would want to hear that. But just kind of putting the weather gauge against them and other communities that have since recovered, that's kind of what they're looking at.

Okay. Brian, any last thoughts before we let you go here? I think for all the viewers at home, it's really important to kind of take what we've said and talk about. And I just realize that at the individual level, the 24 to 72 hours also, I would have low expectations for assistance. So you should be planning to kind of survive that first 24 to 70 hours. two hours and look at different ways to be resilient. Be prepared. Yep.

Excellent. Brian Kavanaugh, thank you for your time, as always. Thank you very much, Virginia. And with that's going to do it for today's episode, thanks so much for doing us here on the DailySkiddle podcast. Be sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on our latest shows, whether our morning interview editions or our afternoon top news, where we bring you the top news of the day.

Thanks again for joining us today. We'll see you right back here around 5 p.m. for our top news edition. The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Lewy and Katrina Trinko. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Tyler O'Neill, Mary Margaret O'Lehand, and Elizabeth Mitchell. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, John Pop, and Joseph von Spakovsky. To learn more or support our work, please visit DailySignal.com.