by Nick Pope
The Daily Caller
Several Democrats were quick to blame climate change for causing the Hawaiian fires that began Aug. 8 and ravaged communities in Maui, but emerging evidence suggests that government failures and faulty infrastructure may be more to blame for the tragedy that has so far claimed 106 lives.
Reports began to surface Tuesday and Wednesday that a downed power line ignited the fires, which ripped through the island of Maui and caught many locals by surprise, a scenario which likely contributed to the high death toll when combined with failures in the government’s emergency alert system and a lack of water available to firefighters who first arrived to extinguish the flames, according to The New York Times. Democratic Hawaii Gov. Mark Green has consistently claimed that climate change was responsible for the disaster’s scale, as have other Democrats, despite the apparent shortcomings in the government’s response to the fires.
“The number one job of government is public safety, and they totally dropped the ball at every level,” Steve Milloy, senior E&E legal fellow and former Trump EPA transition team member, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “They had actual knowledge of conditions on the ground, they understood that wildfires could be a risk, they had a duty and they did nothing” to proactively mitigate the risks of a devastating fire for which they appeared to be unprepared, Milloy continued…
“The governor, a Democrat, is out there trying to dodge responsibility by blaming climate change, and of course, the media is right there with him… there’s no evidence that you can blame emissions, or whatever climate change is occurring, for a failure of government,” Milloy added. “If you want the job, you have to perform and take responsibility when things go wrong,” Milloy said of Green and his administration’s actions to the DCNF.
