What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: The Maui Wildfires
The Maui wildlife fires are the deadliest in the U.S. in over 100 years. The rising death toll is currently 111, with thousands still missing. While much of the nation is grieving and offering support for residents of the devastated town of Lahaina, some are responding by creating and spreading lies and conspiracy theories, even as the fires still burn. Below are some of the half-truths and crackpot theories that are animating the edges of the popular unconscious.
Is the Biden Administration only providing a $700 payment to disaster victims?
Probably the most widely spread and insidious piece of misinformation about the Maui wildfires is the assertion that the Biden administration is providing a one-time, $700 payment to residents affected by the fires. According to voices on both the Left and the Right, this is an outrage and an insult to the fire’s victims. But these performatively outraged opinion-havers are lying by omission, counting on the ignorance of their readers to further a political narrative.
It is true that FEMA is offering a one-time $700 payment to households affected by the Maui fire. These funds are being distributed through FEMA’s already existing Critical Needs Assistance program and are meant as immediate assistance for displaced people. But that $700 is not the entirety of assistance being provided to disaster victims. FEMA’s response includes military search and rescue operations, emergency food and water, emergency shelters, ongoing firefighting efforts, low interest disaster loans, the assistances of the Army Corps of Engineers, and more.
And that’s just the immediate response, a week after the fires. Disaster management is a longterm process, and raining money on disaster victims days after tragic events is generally not regarded as an effective strategy. Ideally, as the specific needs of the residents of Maui are assessed, further help will be available and funds dispersed. Whether FEMA’s initial response to the fires and its overall strategy are effective or not is a matter of opinion, but anger over this $700 payment is misplaced, and it’s too early to assess whether the longterm response is adequate because it hasn’t happened yet.
Was the Maui fire caused by a “direct energy weapon?”
There’s a growing consensus among some on the internet that the Maui fires were caused by a direct energy weapon. According to the dumbest people you went to high school with, a laser was shot from space by the government to wipe out the infrastructure of Lahaina in order to rebuild it as a “15-minute smart city.”
To bolster the claims, they’re sharing a video of a transformer explosion from Louisiana, a picture of a SpaceX launch, videos of ordinary lightning strikes, and really anything else, and calling it proof of an energy weapon strike.
While no one can prove a negative, and it’s too early for investigation results, all available evidence points to more mundane causes for the fire: It was dry; it was windy thanks to nearby Hurricane Dora; and something went wrong with the electrical system.
If you need video evidence, here’s footage from The Maui Bird Conservation Center of an “arc flash,” probably caused by vegetation falling on an electrical line, that causes a fire. This isn’t the actual fire that burned down so much of Maui, but it was taken on the same night, when high winds were causing trees to fall into power line, and power lines were falling all over the island.
As for the 15-minute cities thing, Lahaina is a small town of around 12,000 residents with a central old-town area. It was already a walkable city. Besides, do you really think civic planning nerds have space lasers at their disposal?
Why didn’t the trees burn on Maui?
Photos of unburned trees among fire-ravaged Hawaiian wasteland have some saying, “See, it wasn’t a wildfire at all!” or, “So it must have been a bomb!” They are wrong and dumb. First, plenty of trees did burn. But more importantly, there’s nothing unusual about some trees not burning in a wildlife fire. These kinds of fires spread through burning embers carried by high winds, with the most flammable fuel sources—in this case, mostly buildings and porches—catching fire. Many Maui trees, like the many palm trees imported to the island in the past, are mostly water and have hard bark, so it’s not surprising that some of them didn’t catch fire. Weird burn patterns are evident in every wildlife fire. That’s just how they go.
Did Oprah start the Maui fire?
Talk-show host Oprah Winfrey owns over 1,000 acres on Maui, but her property was spared all damage. She also owns land in Montecito, Calif., where there was a wildfire in 2017, and her house didn’t burn there either. This is apparently enough evidence to make Oprah the number one arson suspect among the mouth-breathers on Twitter (or X or whatever the fuck), where a post about it that ends “WAKE UP!!!!” has been viewed over 12 million times. Oprah, the post suggested, started the fire in order to make land on Maui cheaper so she could buy more of it.
There’s nothing to really debunk here because it’s just insinuation, but Oprah’s Hawaiian ranch is near Hana, clear on the other side of Maui, about 72 miles from the fire at Lahaina, so it isn’t surprising that it didn’t burn. Also: Oprah could already buy the entire island without burning it down first.
Did Joe Biden say he wasn’t going to visit Maui because it “isn’t a swing state?”
Despite the post on your weird aunt’s Facebook, Joe Biden’s press secretary did not say he wasn’t planning to visit Hawaii because it isn’t a swing state. He actually is going to Maui.
The source of this piece of bullshit is “The Dunning-Krueger Times,” a website that seems to exist to get people to share outrage-bait news stories on social media while calling itself “satire.” If you read the source article (and the rest of this site), you’ll note the complete lack of humor. “Satire” my ass.
Stephen Johnson is a Staff Writer for Lifehacker where he covers pop culture, including two weekly columns “The Out of Touch Adults’ Guide to Kid Culture” and “What People are Getting Wrong this Week.” He graduated from Emerson College with a BFA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing.
Previously, Stephen was Managing Editor at NBC/Universal’s G4TV. While at G4, he won a Telly Award for writing and was nominated for a Webby award. Stephen has also written for Blumhouse, FearNET, Performing Songwriter magazine, NewEgg, AVN, GameFly, Art Connoisseur International magazine, Fender Musical Instruments, Hustler Magazine, and other outlets. His work has aired on Comedy Central and screened at the Sundance International Film Festival, Palm Springs International Film Festival, and Chicago Horror Film Festival. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.
