When the fire hit the traffic jam, and the cars exploded one after another, that fueled it further and contributed to the firestorm.
I imagine the missing include a lot of people who just haven’t contacted relatives, yet. And probably a lot of duplication. I think the camp fire had more than 1000 missing at one point, but only about 85 people were actually dead. So while the huge missing lost suggests that the death toll will continue to rise, i hope it doesn’t rise much more.
Like simply treating a disaster as a target of opportunity, pouncing on the vulnerable community. No need for there to be sone sort of supervillainy, just having a sharp eye and no shame.
pumps don’t feed water directly to the hydrants. They feed water towers which provide the pressure and a supply of water. So there’s a buffer built in. But if they’re draining the system to fight fires and it’s not replaced then that’s definitely a flaw. There should be backup generators for municipal water or a local source of water that the fire trucks can draw from using their own pumps.
I hope this is correct. But it seems strange - bordering on cruel - to wait this long to contact people who you know will be deeply concerned about you.
It’s said there’s quite a large one just a couple hundred yards west of Lahaina.
I can imagine there’s a bottleneck in the number of still-functioning cellphones and computers.
And cell phones, telephone lines, and ISPs.
I haven’t heard anything about ham radio operators doing their thing, although it’s not unlikely that if there were, they and/or their sets are gone.
Are the phone systems back up? Do survivors still have their cell phones? Maybe someone was reported missing by a parent, a sibling, and 5 friends and had only managed to contact the parent. 
Yes, they just have to be able to get to it.
As to the pump issue they had backup generators:
NY Times
John Stufflebean, the county’s director of water supply, said backup generators allowed the system to maintain sufficient overall supply throughout the fire. But he said that as the fire began moving down the hillside, turning homes into rubble, many properties were damaged so badly that water was spewing out of their melting pipes, depressurizing the network that also supplies the hydrants.
Given the size of the community they may never have the resources to put together a plan to fight a fire moving that fast.
During the recent 100 mph wind-driven grassfire in Boulder, the fire department said the only thing they could do was drive into neighborhoods and try to alert people to evacuate. The fire chief said with it moving so fast, there was no way to fight it. Although 100mph is a lot more than 60, I expect 60 is still fast enough to preclude being able to do much about it.
As for the missing, I heard an official on the news say that they would have expected the number of missing to have gone down more by now, so it sounds fairly grim
Ironically, some people in the water may have become hypothermic. The water is warm, but it’s below body temp. One of the people in that Washington Post article said she periodically had to move closer to the fire when she got too cold. She wound up with burns of her face. Some people might not have been able to force themselves to go closer.
That is scary. I hope it’s mostly just the ongoing confusion.
Only a small part of Maui was wrecked by the fire. It would be shocking to hear that disaster relief there is so weak that a survivor’s loss of a mobile phone prevents communicating with relatives.
If I lost my cell phone I would be incapable of calling/texting relatives because I no longer store phone numbers in my head. I don’t even know my own phone number without looking it up.
“We see you, and we love you.”
…you would be pretty shocked to hear what happened in the aftermath of the Puerto Rico hurricanes. I don’t think its appropriate to be blaming the victims for “not communicating with relatives.” There is an information vacuum at the moment, it could take weeks or months to be able to sort out. The only “cruel” thing that has happened here are many people are dead, and many more no longer have a home.
With a little competent assistance, knowing their names and roughly where they live should suffice.
It’s one of the important disaster-relief functions to fill this vacuum. This certainly would include helping survivors communicate.
…and it is a function of disaster-relief. It isn’t a function nor a responsibility of the victims, who may well be dead. It’s bordering on cruel to even be having this discussion.
We might not be talking about survivors. And even if we were, there aren’t many scenarios where “cruelty” would be playing a part.