Evacuation maps, new leadership, more staffing mark changes at Maui Emergency Management Agency after fires

When a brush fire broke out in Kā‘anapali on Monday, the Maui Emergency Management Agency sent out 10 alerts in the span of three hours, notifying the public of evacuation orders and road closures as crews battled the blaze.

It was a drastic difference from the day of the deadly Aug. 8, 2023 wildfires, when MEMA decided not to set off the outdoor all-hazard warning sirens in Lahaina and failed cell service left residents in the dark about the severity of the situation. At least 102 people died in their homes or on the streets trying to flee the flames.

Emergencies since the 2023 wildfires — including a recent tsunami warning during which officials set off the outdoor sirens multiple times in the lead-up to the arrival of the first waves — have shown just how seriously government officials and the public now are taking potential disasters.

Amos Lonokailua-Hewett has led the Maui Emergency Management Agency since January 2024, after former administrator Herman Andaya resigned following public outcry over his handling of the wildfires, and former Hawai‘i County Civil Defense chief Darryl Oliveira served as interim administrator for four months.

Lonokailua-Hewett said communication and public updates now are among the top priorities for the agency.

“The public information, or lack thereof, causes tremendous angst and panic, and we wanted to ensure that we improve in that area,” Lonokailua-Hewett said in an interview with the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative on Thursday.

A critical new tool in that response is the county’s new real-time evacuation notification system through Genasys Protect, a mobile and web-based public safety platform. Maui County’s notification system on the app went public on May 1, allowing users to see predetermined evacuation zones, track live statuses and receive real-time notifications.

With Genasys, people can access location-specific information much faster, Lonokailua-Hewett said. On Monday during the 33-acre Kā‘anapali fire, the app showed notifications for each affected zone, including orders to evacuate, advisories to prepare for potential evacuation, or updates that evacuation orders had been lifted.

Each of the evacuation zones has been modeled to clear in 30 minutes or less, based on the number of homes and vehicles in the area. This timeframe also accounts for “the human behavior element that adds to the time.”  

“So that’s an improvement,” Lonokailua-Hewett said. “We can notify earlier, which allows the community more time to leave. We will do that in a sequence from advisory to warning to order, and that keeps people off the road unnecessarily.”

Genasys Protect doesn’t replace other alert systems; it’s meant to work together with MEMA alerts as well as social media, county news releases and notifications from the National Weather Service or other agencies to keep people in the loop during emergencies.

Lonokailua-Hewett said a big part of improving public notifications is working with the county’s communications team. Communications Director Laksmi Abraham said anytime the county goes into partial or full activation of the Emergency Operations Center, the communications team comes in to assist, with the frequency of notifications based on the severity of the incident.

“So we’re using a full plethora of communications tools to make sure that, especially now, we are effectively communicating across the board to as many different demographics as possible and using every tool available to us to be able to get the information out as quickly as we possibly can,” Abraham said.

MEMA also has procured Ladris AI technology that allows it to model traffic and potential evacuation routes and provide recommendations to other county departments on potential projects to help improve the county’s road networks. They’re focusing first on high-risk areas — so far they’ve been working on Lahaina and Pā‘ia — and eventually want to do the entire county.

But should cell service drop during a future emergency, emergency officials may need to turn to the outdoor warning sirens. After the fires, one of the biggest complaints was over the decision not to set off the sirens, which are tested publicly on the first working day of each month. Former administrator Andaya said at the time that he feared the sirens used primarily for tsunami warnings would send people to higher ground and into the path of the fire. 

While the Hawai‘i Emergency Management Agency took the responsibility of sounding the sirens during the recent tsunami warning, the Maui agency has the ability to set off the sirens “whenever we deem it necessary at the local level,” Lonokailua-Hewett said.  

When asked how the agency had changed its policies for deciding when to activate the sirens, Lonokailua-Hewett said it’s not based on the conditions of the emergency, but whether there’s been a disruption in communication, such as cell service going down. He added that sirens are just one of the tools that emergency officials can use.

“The limitation with a siren is that the siren is a sound — it doesn’t provide a message,” he said. “And so what you have to do after you hear the siren is you have to turn on the radio and you have to get the message.”

He said MEMA is working with radio broadcasting groups to boost its capability and use grant funds to provide alternate power to one of the island’s main radio stations so messaging can continue during an outage. 

MEMA is the only emergency-related county department where leadership has changed since the fires. While the police and fire chiefs are still the same as in 2023, Lonokailua-Hewett is a new face to mayor’s cabinet but no stranger to disaster response as a retired battalion chief who served in Lahaina during the 2018 fire that burned multiple homes in Kaua‘ula Valley before firefighters stopped it short of Lahaina town.

At the time, Lonokailua-Hewett called it “the most risky fire” of his career.

MEMA has since undergone a major reorganization, with staff nearly tripling from nine to 25, including two public information officers. The recently approved fiscal year 2026 budget also will give the agency three more positions starting Oct. 1.

During the fires, staff in the Emergency Operations Center were “stretched too thin to fulfill their roles effectively,” with some employees taking multiple roles at once, MEMA’s after-action report found.

Eighteen positions are currently filled, Lonokailua-Hewett said. The agency is working to hire the rest of the vacancies, most notably the “tremendously critical” role of operations sections chief. The agency received 14 applications for this position and is currently interviewing candidates. Lonokailua-Hewett said they may be able to fill the role in mid-August or early September.

Under the old organizational structure, one person used to oversee the Emergency Operations Center and the planning section, which gathers intel on the situation. It’s a massive role for just one person, and “how they actually pulled it off, I’m not sure,” Lonokailua-Hewett said.

In addition to expanding the team, MEMA also hired a training officer in December to teach emergency preparation and response courses and hold exercises with its partners.

A couple of weeks ago, MEMA participated in a three-part series with hospital officials, police, fire, medics and other government agencies on mass casualty and mass violence incidents that involved each participant talking about how their agency would respond. Lonokailua-Hewett said they’re working on putting together a written plan from that training.

In the few times the Emergency Operations Center has been activated since the fires, Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said: “I’ve seen a huge change in response, in coordination, in communication, in keeping the public informed about what’s happening.”

He pointed out that the county is “taking advantage of drones, AI, different technology to increase our situational awareness and ability to respond” and has also added another helicopter with capabilities for firefighting, search and rescue, and night vision.

“I think just overall, better communication, better coordination and staffing up. … Each of the departments — MEMA, fire, police — are all trying to address the recommendations that came out of those (after-action reports), and so are we, as a start,” Bissen said. “But we don’t want to stop there. We want to continue to do improvements.”

*EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is the third in a four-part interview series with officials from the Maui Fire Department, Maui Police Department, Maui Emergency Management and Hawaiian Electric that will publish this week ahead of the two-year anniversary on Friday of the Lahaina and Upcountry wildfires. Tomorrow, the Hawai’i Journalism Initiative focuses on Hawaiian Electric.

Part 1 – Maui Fire Department: Two years after wildfires, Maui Fire Department’s changes to staffing, fleet, fire code aim to prevent another tragedy

Part 2 – Maui Police Department: Better tools for Maui Police Department since 2023 wildfires include new helicopter, rapid DNA machine