Important Takeaways:

• Maui fire survivors describe nighttime looting and rerouted supply drops as they say local leadership botches emergency response
• Maui residents are becoming increasingly desperate for local leadership to take control of the emergency response to the catastrophic fires that leveled parts of the Hawaiian island and left at least 93 dead.
• While rescue crews made their way across the island with water, food, and first aid, locals told Insider supply drops were being rerouted and anguished residents were taking matters into their own hands.
• “There’s some police presence. There’s some small military presence, but at night, people are being robbed at gunpoint,” Matt Robb, a co-owner of a Lāhainā bar called The Dirty Monkey, told Insider. “People are raped and pillaged. I mean, they’re going through houses — and then by day, it’s hunky-dory. So where is the support? I don’t think our government and our leaders, at this point, know how to handle this or what to do.”
• Kami Irwin, a Maui resident helping to coordinate relief efforts “I had to deal with a situation that wasn’t even part of who I am or what I do,” Irwin said. “I had to talk to pilots that got grounded with our medical supplies who were stuck on the Big Island because the Department of Health stopped them from transporting insulin. And we have people all over the island that need insulin.”
• She said residents chose to take matters into their own hands after realizing they were repeatedly seeing the same local volunteers, not government officials, coordinating aid efforts.

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