Dave Hakes' – Island Mode

These are all old, but they are “the latest and greatest” – sad if you think about it – the county is suppose to have open meetings on ALL of this AND these are all suppose to be updated every 5-10 years. Forgive me for the highlighting – I have studied these through the years and made notes at the time. I have no idea what the notes were at this point, but the yellow highlights are still there…

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS FOR MAUI COUNTY- A CITIZEN’S GUIDE
The Maui County Hazard Mitigation Plan

County of Maui 2030 General Plan – County Wide Policy Plan
County of Maui Department of Planning COMMUNITY PLANNING PROCESS HANDBOOK August 2017
Maui Island Plan General Plan 2030

WEST MAUI COMMUNITY PLAN (1996)

A lot of people are going to be litigation happy for the next few years – and, as American citizens, it is their right to be. The only way anything gets changed in this country is through the law…

You have to consider the above plans and weigh them against the thinking of the time. As tourism took off in the 90’s, not only did the idea of “controlling it” fall away, we were all happy to put these plans aside and pretend they didn’t exist (or they no longer applied because the economy had changed). We were all on the train – and as long as the train was rolling, we were all happy and fat…

We really wanted to do something with the deserts on the south side (Kihei/Wailea) and the west side (Lahaina/Kaanapali) of the island – so we created a few Urban Heat Islands (without updating any of the old infrastructure) and created the (WUI) Wilderness-Urban Interface without REALLY considered the consequences. No one cared as long as the money was flowing as we crept more and more into the WUI with our modern technologies (which are all, at some temperature and/or pressure, ignition sources)…

It’s very ironic that this happened when it did because I spent most of the year studying Urban Heat Islands and WUI’s and their effect on the local watersheds/environments and “Global Warming” – I didn’t post for more than 6 months because I wanted the second half of the years posts to be ALL ABOUT these topics. My first post this year (July 29th) has tons of articles and data to read through if you’d like:
Urban Heat Islands

Even after the Lahaina fires a few years ago – the money was flowing and no one wanted to spend it on infrastructure – so we ALL ignored it. Hell, I was there cleaning ash out of the carpets the next day – we all went back to work and just ignored it…
2023/08/22 – A Maui wildfire nearly took Lahaina 5 years ago. Its warning was ignored

In June of 2020, I Wrote this:
No Blame – Just Solutions – this was a response to Victorino asking for solutions during one of his press conferences while everyone was locked down. At the time, there was no way of getting any information to him or anyone who worked for him – so I posted my response. It highlights some of the events that have, and have not, occured on the island over the years and how we could potentially “fix” them.

The fear now is that “they” can start from scratch. There’s one thing I’ve learned over the years and that is that the government is bad at just about everything they do – the market is what works. The best job the government does is to support anything that keeps the market open (so consumers have their choice of the best products and services, for the best pricing) – in other words, the governments only job should be to stay out of the way and to assure that large companies stay out of the way so no choices are limited, withheld or blocked from consideration.

Here… Today… How we rebuild the areas of Maui that need to be rebuilt is up to us. We can not let “them” do what they do…