Episode 51 - Lahaina Lighthouse

0:00 Hi, everyone. I'm Emily and I'm Vince. And this is the Lighthouse Lowdown. This is take two. Coffee's coming. We had to start over, but now we're here again. I'm going to jump right into it. I can't tell if this is going to be a long episode or not. I have a couple of little stories mixed in here, so. Oh, no. Is there another bee or something? I don't know. He's doing his hunting thing. We had a bee in our our basement recently that I had to catch in a Tupperware container and put outside.

0:41 Any flying? I like insects. I will pick them up. I think they're fine. But if they're flying, something primal inside me is like it get far, far away. So I had to approach it with the Tupperware and reach for it. I've never reached for a bee in my life. Hmm. That's how I feel about snakes. I like snakes. I don't like snakes. We used to own snakes. Bo's chased a snake before. Bo's a cat. No, no. So anyway, hopefully we don't have another bee because that means they're just coming in through the walls. We may have another leak in the wall. Bo likes those, too. Another leak. Yeah. For those of you who don't know, our Riprap studio is in the basement of a rented house and our house.

1:27 When it rains, the water shoots through the walls. Yeah. So through tiny holes and cracks. Yeah. So the cats like that, like a fountain. The cats do. They like to play with it coming out of the walls so they get covered in water. I don't know. I think it's cute. I have some videos. But if this were our house, it would not be cute. It would be devastating to have the walls caving in. OK, so my history buoy today, I just wrote this morning. It's going to be a short one, but I've been wanting to cover flags. Like, OK, yeah. So the specific one I'm doing today is storm flags. And this is the first time me using animation on our slideshow to reveal photos. Let's go.

2:11 So we'll see if it works. But yeah, this is a very visual history buoy. So people want to head over to our YouTube and check it out. You can't, but I'll be describing the flags. OK, so that didn't work. Hang on. I get out of here. OK, so it's working. All right. So first row of flags are so storm flags. I say storm flags are indicators of inclement weather that are often used on coast guard ships, beaches and sometimes outside lighthouses. We've talked about how some lighthouses we've covered in the past have been responsible for doing storm signals, which.

2:53 I think at the time we were talking about, it wouldn't have wouldn't have made sense to have electrical signals, so it would have been storm flags. Yeah. This first row is more local flags. So these are like I'm pretty sure these are not ones that the Coast Guard would put up. It would be like for local fishermen, like a some sort of beach official. We put this up as like a local thing. So a white flag means that it's good weather and it's planning on being good weather. So usually these flags are like an indicator of later in the day what you're going to be experiencing, because obviously you can walk outside and be like, it's a little rainy. It's nice out. So it's a forecast. It's not just a present. Exactly. So why it is fair if you see a blue flag, it's going to rain.

3:34 And if you see a white block on top of a blue block, it means that there's going to be rain just in that area. And so like it'll pass on quick. Kind of like fat. Yeah. Patches and fast rain. A black triangle means that there's going to be a temperature change. And I don't know. It says displayed above means the temperature is going to be higher and displayed below below means lower temperature. So it must be a flag that has to be an add on. Yeah. In unison with another flag. And then a white flag with a black square in the middle is it's going to have a cold wave, which is a pretty cool flag, which would be you're going to think this is so you're going to think this next flag is really cool. The hurricane flag is that one but red.

4:18 And you have to have two of them. So. So this next row, if you have a red triangle, a small craft advisory just means that if you're if you're in a small boat, like you're going to have some struggles, like if you're in like a little sailboat or something, then if you saw a red triangle, then like a schooner. No, this is a bigger. Yeah. So dinghy. Yeah. It just means that there's winds between 23 to 38 miles per hour. So that's pretty high. That's like that's a wind advisory for normal people, not on the water. So I can imagine a little wind being in trouble. So two flags, two red triangle flags, one on top of the other is a gale warning, which just means higher winds, 39 to 54 miles per hour.

5:07 Storm warning is the red square with the black square in the middle. Cool. And then hurricane warning is two of those flags, one on top of the other. Seventy four plus mile per hour winds hurricanes. They they talk about I didn't go too deep into it, but they talk about online the fabric that those have to be made of because they're flown specifically when winds are like. Insane, they're like super thick, hardy fabric. Otherwise, they just every time you put them up, they'd be torn to shreds. Yeah. You see no flag up there. You might be worried. Yeah. They have to last long enough. All right. Last row is just variations of the second row. So combinations of the storm flag and the small craft advisory flag is just indicates like the direction of the storm.

5:56 And that's that. So. If you own a boat. For fun, for hobby time. I assume most people are only going to take that boat out in fair weather, or maybe if there's rain, like light rain, if you're fishing. But it's still for fun. But I don't know if rain ruins fishing on the ocean. I have no idea. I think so. But what other ship would say, OK, there's a southeast storm warning and that applies to my plan for the day. Is it like merchant ships are looking at these lights or these flags? Yeah. And because they have to do their business, they got to travel.

6:38 Yeah. And it's just like a warning that you're going to have wind coming from a certain direction and you like you should adjust your navigation to reflect that. It's cool. Yeah. I don't know anything about boating. So. It's one of your bucket list things. It is to learn how to sail. It is on there. I was going to do it a couple of years ago and then it just kind of died out. I think you should do like a introductory class here somewhere in the middle, middle Midwest, as they say. Perry Lake has one out near Lawrence. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. And then someday do one on the ocean would be cool. That'd be crazy. I'd be really scared. I'd be stressed out. There'd be people that would know what's going on, though.

7:18 That's true. We probably could find them through the network of the lighthouse low down friends. Yeah. Teach me how to sail. Teach me how to sail. Teach me. Teach me how to sail. What cultural crossover? We were getting musical before this. We like to pump up the studio before we get going. Yeah. OK, so moving on, we're doing another Hawaiian lighthouse today. Woo hoo. I think I've only done one. Right. I want to say two, or this we talked about to. Oh, yeah. Because I did one on Barber's Point when I was visiting there. And then the other one I was talking about had the only hyper reading hyper radial camera.

8:00 I can't remember. It's very pretty, though. Lens in the U.S. Anyway, so we're going to be talking about our second Hawaiian lighthouse. It's Lahaina Lighthouse. I don't know if you recognize. No. OK. I am not cultured enough to recognize. No, no. Something happened that everybody knew about. And so I think you'll recall when I get into more millionaires burn the island. No. Lahaina. And let me see and make sure I remember that right. Yeah. Lahaina, Lahaina, Maui in Hawaii. It was the first lighthouse in Hawaii. I've also seen it. That I saw the USLHS has it as Lahaina Harbor lighthouse and everywhere else has those just like line a lighthouse.

8:45 So I'm just saying line a lighthouse. Sure. I may include a harbor in parentheses in the title. OK. Yeah, we got to be fully informed. So I pulled up a map. It's just this little area over here on the top of Maui. Cool. So Hawaii in general was a popular stop for whaling ships. We talk about whaling ships a lot. That's probably another history buoy. I should do is whaling ships because we talk about it constantly. In the 1820s and 1860s, they stopped there a lot to reload on provisions and stuff. And Honolulu had high port and supply costs. And so Lahaina became the stop of choice for these whaling ships. And Lahaina was also the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii from 1820 to 1845 until it was switched to Honolulu.

9:34 So that was why it was the first lighthouse to pop up was in that town. In the 1800s. Yeah. Cool. So it was built in 1840 on a section of the waterfront called I do my best here, Keowaiki, which means the small passage, because it was basically a small gap in the coral reef where it was safe for ships or like deep enough and didn't have any obstructions for a ship to pass through. And so that's where they decided to build the lighthouse to like guide people into the harbor. Smart. It was first lit on November 4th and the singular piece of evidence that we have that there even was a lighthouse at all. Like the only evidence at all was the single letter that described the light as a quote, tall looking box like structure about nine feet high and one foot wide.

10:20 So it's just like this little little tiny one. Yeah. And that was it. Like there's no other record of it being there, but that's the only lighthouse that's been there. That was the first one. OK. But yeah, back in the 1800s, 18 in 1840. Of course, this was before the U.S. was involved. So we don't have a lot of documentation. The keeper we do like, OK. Do I get the do I? The keeper here was paid $20 a year. Ships coming into port were charged a dollar for the lighthouse, which is kind of like. That's like half a month of this keeper salaries. Ten dollars for anchorage and piloting six months salary and three dollars for water.

11:05 I think that's expensive. Yeah. But I guess ships that are traveling. You need Hawaii. Yeah. Like there's no there's nowhere else to stop. Yeah. So I get it. And ships that are traveling from one side to the other, like ships that have to stop in Hawaii are probably carrying a lot of a lot of cash. Yeah, that's awesome. A cash flow. I wonder how much Honolulu was if ten dollars was cheaper. Do you know that the ship routes that now common ones that would go through? Yeah, I wonder where they set off from 1820s. I don't know. Different world back then. Yeah, it is crazy. It's like they're not refueling like, you know, nowadays, if ships stopped, it's like it needs fuel.

11:50 And these are just go with the wind. Well, they're resupplying. So it's kind of in a way probably food. Well, yeah. But yeah, she mean like they don't just gas. Yeah. So there was a second lighthouse that replaced the first somewhere between when the first one was built in 1840 and when the third one was built in 1866. But there's like no record of what time that was. We just know that at some point there was another one. And all we know about it is a size description. 19 feet by 25 feet. That's all that there is bigger. Yeah, it's it's increases in size every time. Except for nowadays, it's kind of small again.

12:30 So the third light was built in 1866 described as, quote, 25 feet by 30 feet and a light tower built on top, containing a light room and a sleeping room for the light keeper. The lamps are altered to burn kerosene oil instead of whale oil. End quote. I have a very old picture of it. Cool. So it's just like a little it's a cute little shack. And you can see the two reflectors in there, which is fun. But they're just those like silver plates. And the lamps in there were just nothing special. So it was pretty pretty local. Sure. Yeah. I've never seen a lantern room like that. Yeah, I know. It's very military looking. Yeah, it's like a turret with the but it's got like a house.

13:11 Yeah. And for like the eight like a house roof near the mid 1800s for that to be built, it's kind of I've never seen anything like that. I think it'd be easier to build than a classic round lantern room. Yeah. Like this is a lot sturdier than a wood tower. Is this I thought it was wood. What am I looking at? I'm sorry. Wood like. Oh, I have all over place, a tall skinny. Yes. The structure itself. Yeah. Yes. Also something interesting. This light had a storeroom in the bottom and they rented it out to a sugar plantation owner for ninety six dollars a year.

13:52 It's expensive. Yeah. The I guess so. I wonder, like, are they storing the keepers in the screwed? I know he should know how he's sitting on like a gold mine. It's not it's not a lot of space, so it's not like they could. Maybe they weren't making that much sugar. I don't know. I don't know. What is he storing down there? I would guess all of the crops of Hawaii are very high value. I'm guessing sugar you have to keep dry. I think it seems like a bad spot for everything dry. Basically. Yeah. Maybe it was tools. Maybe it was, you know, refining, bagging. I don't know. Yeah. The sugar trade in Hawaii. That's very particular.

14:33 But considering this guy was paid twenty dollars a year, I mean, it's a different keeper at this point. But, you know, if twenty dollars a year was around the salary that was being paid, ninety six dollars a year is insane. Yeah. But sugar was probably very, very profitable. So. 1893, a group of businessmen overthrew the monarchy and started a provisional government. I have a lot of details about this because I went down the rabbit hole. This is like one of the stories I was talking about, like, I don't know if this is going to be long because I went deep into space. There was a coup. There was a coup. So I'll go into just the details of it, because it really, the story just shocked me on how easy it was to do whatever you wanted back then.

15:16 Just whatever you wanted. Yeah, not even just by saying whatever you want. OK, so I'll go into details. 1891, so two years before this, Queen Lillio Colani was sworn into office. And at this point, I don't know how long the monarchy was going on. But like this, this was like a long lineage of like a royal family. So she was like, by the time that she was sworn into office, she was 52 and had been training for this her entire life. So it wasn't like people were sworn in office that had no idea what they were doing. It was just kind of, you know, it wasn't 14. There was a structure. But there was a lot of political clashes at that time in Hawaii, split between people who wanted to keep the monarchy, those who wanted to form a provisional government, those who wanted a new constitution, but to keep the monarchy the same.

16:07 And those who wanted a new government and wanted to annex. I think that's how it's annexed the United States. Lots. Every little bit of variation there can be between what people want for like the government. Nothing easy. Yeah. So 1892 was an election year. And since none of these four political parties held majority in the Senate, the focus was more on selecting the Queen's cabinet members, which she was supposed to select herself. So every time she would select one, they would veto it. And like, it's just like this vicious cycle because the constitution that had been written was forced upon the last king of Hawaii. And so they're saying they wanted a new constitution because this the one that that was written took away a lot of the powers of the monarchy and of the crown.

16:55 So at this point, the Queen made it known that moving forward, she would be trying to restore most of the power to the crown and make a new constitution, which went along with what some people wanted. But most people had like very big divergence. Yeah. Lots of. What's the word they get off? Lots of. Mm hmm. Like on the street. I can't think of diversity in opinion. The annexation club, obviously the people who wanted to annex. It's kind of sad because they wanted to annex Hawaii from the king from. They wanted to get absorbed into the United States.

17:36 Like, I didn't know how to like, is it saying they wanted was the U.S. to annex them or they wanted to be annexed? I can't know these things. I know I couldn't look up how to how to use the word appropriately. But was was Hawaii ruled by its own people? Yeah. I don't I don't even know if that's the right thing to say or if you know, if that's offensive. But were they ruled by their own monarchy until the United States adopted them as a state or or their territory? Was Hawaii a territory? No, it was a separate thing. But people wanted to be annexed to the U.S. because they thought dollar bills, you know. Yeah. The whole that Hawaii would prosper.

18:16 We part of like a very powerful country. You would have protection, you know. Obviously, that would put a lot of their culture and ways of life in danger. So it's been a challenge. A lot of Hawaiians were against that. So the Annexation Party Club formed a committee of safety, which was a group of 13 mostly American businessmen and all businessmen in general. So like there was some Hawaiian born former, like their parents were American citizens, moved to Hawaii, had a kid in the sky. You know, it's just kind of when you read about it. I pulled up a picture. These are some of the guys that are in the annexation club.

18:57 So it's obvious. I got to say this. They're all white men. Yeah. OK. But this layout hits hard. It is this. This was actually from that time. So they had they had like digital like design layouts done. I think this was all done by hand. Oh, yeah. Digital. I don't think they had. What am I a millennial millennial? I'm saying digital art was incredible back then. A hundred years later, fraternities were like, dude, we need to copy this vibe. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. This is I think we could make a copy of this and put it on the back of a T-shirt with like the palm fronds in the back.

19:40 We are not wearing this. We're not part of this. Not these guys, but like our own, like our faces and the friends of the lighthouse lowdown people we've interviewed. That would be cool. The palm trees in the background, Loro in the middle. The text going on. This this is I'm sorry. This is awesome. It's bussin. Even though this may be a highly controversial topic. Yeah. They're really advertising it well with their faces. Yeah. Also, the amount of bomb mustaches going on in this photo is crazy. One can only desire to look like these gentlemen. The one the one guy that's his profile profile is specifically to show off is curled mustache.

20:20 Mr. Hoogs is like, you don't need to see my face. Check this out. Check out this stack of this rack of a stash. This stalker guy over here tried it as well, but he didn't have that twirl going on. He probably had the jawline as a younger man. You can see it kind of the jowls kind of remove. So anyway, we're talking these people up and taking them down at the same time. Anyway, so they formed this committee of safety and they were obviously the people that wanted the U.S. to take over Hawaii and also to form a provisional government. So at this point, they just marched their way to the government building and declared that the queen was deposed, that there was a new government Sanford B. Dole was now president of Hawaii and American troops would be landing in the evening.

21:11 Oh, no. And that was all there was to it. What year? 1900 roughly? 1893. So the queen was just told that if she wanted to protest against this, it would need to be accepted by this new provisional government. Why would they ever do that? And her appeal would need to be addressed to the United States in Washington. Why? I don't know. You're going to have to write a letter to the United States. You have to write to President Cleveland. It's like the big United States is coming with the military tomorrow. Basically, yeah, I'm the queen and you can't just come in here and just be like, she's done. I read that there was something going on.

21:51 I didn't go too deep into it. The reason why they were doing this was because and why it was mostly businessmen, probably sugar plantation owners and pineapple plantation owners. All crops and transport. Yeah, it's because there was some really, really painful tariff that was about to be laid out on the people who profit from their land and stuff. So that's probably what they were going for was, hey, if the queen's going to put this really, really heavy tariff on everybody, then she's done. So much of history is driven by profit. Yeah. The queen, she did write a protest. Write an appeal. And President Cleveland did an investigation and found that she should be in power, like that this overthrow was not legal and valid in any way.

22:40 But Mr. Dole sent back a letter to President Cleveland and said, quote, we do not recognize the right of the president of the United States to interfere in our domestic affairs. Such rights should be conferred upon him by the act of this governance and by that alone, or it should be acquired by conquest. End quote. Basically, like come over here and make us. Or and like, why did you tell her to send a letter to the United States anyway, if you were going to be like, actually, I don't think you can do that. This is what was the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence was 1776, right? Yeah. 100 plus years later. It's the same vibe. It's just it's a different part of the world.

23:21 Different things are going on. But I've thought about with kind of a loser level of knowledge, just me being trivial, staring at the ceiling. Wow. The American Revolution. So many descriptive words. Like to to grossly reduce it down. They wanted the British wanted to tax us. Compared to our taxes now, very little. And the no taxation without representation, meaning you don't own this. You're not here managing, running. You're not representing us as the people. You can't tax us. And it took a bunch of farmers to grab rifles and burn boats.

24:01 And then all of a sudden, we were at war with the largest military in the world. Hundred years, 120 years later, you've got this group of gentlemen being like, you will get rights through permission by us or come and take it. Like, it's not that surprising to me. Like that time in the world. Yeah. Again, but like it's different because these were native people in charge of their own country. Like, and they should be. Yeah. They just like powerhouse through it. I don't know. I mean, it just made me like, oh, and then the Queen said that she was not going to be starting a civil war because people would die and she cared too much for her people to subject them to that.

24:42 So she was just like, OK, I guess that's that. And then they put her in jail for like, conspired a treason because she wrote the letter. I'm like, oh, no. It sounds like history. It's awful. It's not fair. That's what it is. It's just not fair. And you can look back and be like, oh, I enjoyed my trip to Hawaii. It would have been a lot cooler if it was his own country and you got to really like experience it. But that's a whole thing. I'm sure a lot of people are very knowledgeable and passionate about. There was like a lot of writing when it was annexed to the United States, that it was like a very, very sad time for Hawaii, because I think a lot of the local people didn't want it.

25:24 But the people that were in power did. So like, what are they supposed to do about it? And they wrote a petition for it not to happen. And the petition was ignored. I think most people are a large majority, maybe two thirds or something, signed this petition to not be annexed. And they were just like, no, where the queen would have listened to something like that because she cared about her people. Hawaii to today is still very different from the other places that I've traveled to. I've only been to Hawaii and it's the only place I've been to Hawaii. So as a tourist, I didn't really spend the time I should have. But the taxes are super high. The costs of goods there are super high, I assume, because many of them are imported.

26:08 That's expensive. And I got an impression from conversations I had that locals of I don't know how to say this well, Hawaiian original bloodlines, those who have always been Hawaiians or those who have left and come back because they feel connected to the land. Don't they still don't really accept the standard American way. Group of dudes get together, decide that, no, you don't have this anymore. Now it's controlled and governed. We've decided that this is the best thing for you guys. It's like you could let the people elect that there was an election.

26:49 So it was so they still recognize the royal family in Hawaii. They're they're following the lineage. I attached in the show notes the website, the official website for the royal family. And you can look at like their family tree and like look down. So you can track it to the 1890s. Yeah. Well, even further than that, if you read about the lighthouse, it really just kind of mentions that in 1893, there was a coup that ended the monarchy. And I was like, what is that about? Yeah, I was like, I want to read more on that. So anyway, so in 1893, when they had this coup, Captain Taylor, who was the harbor master in Lahaina, was also appointed the new headkeeper of Lahaina Lighthouse after the current keeper refused to support the provisional government.

27:34 So they were like, you're out of here. You don't agree with us. You're done. Like, it's probably like Captain Taylor. His name, his full name. What was it? It was something else. It was like it's the whitest name of all time. Besides John Smith, David Taylor, Captain David Taylor. Like that's that sounds just right. But anyway, he took over. And although Hawaii was annexed in 1898, the lighthouses were not taken over until 1904. Like it just took that long for them to get over and start laying out plans for how they were going to run the lighthouses after that. So Lieutenant John R. Slattery was assigned to travel there and oversee improvements to the lighthouses and the harbors.

28:18 And at this point, the Lighthouse Board said about Lahaina Light, quote, this is a fixed white light composed of two ordinary kitchen lamps of small power with red and green sectors estimated to be 20 feet above high water. The lights are shown from a white wooden perimeter tower built on top of a wooden storehouse. It is difficult to distinguish this light from the lights in town. And so obviously they needed to make a replacement. So the next year in 1905, they built a replacement photo. It's kind of hard to see, but it has the new one next to that's cool. The old one. So it's a lot taller. It's a skeleton tower so it can handle the winds a little better. They gave it a lens lantern, which is the first time I had heard about it.

29:00 I'll show a picture of what that looks like. This one was 55 feet tall, also wooden, also a perimeter skeleton tower and had a workroom underneath the lantern room where the fixed reflectors were replaced with a red and white sector lens of a lens lantern. So when I first read it, I just thought it was a Fresnel lens. But it's just like it's it's like more of a self-contained little it's like a lantern. Yeah, it's like a lantern you would carry around, but there's also a Fresnel lens inside. So it's like a special little lens. Not super interesting. It's like a beacon light before beacon lights, electric, electric beacon lights existed.

29:40 Because I assume this thing on top is to allow for heat dissipation airflow. Yeah. But that's cool. I've never seen that before. So this is what I found on Google just when I typed it in. So I'm sure there's variations and this is probably not exactly what the other one looked like. But so no lantern room, just this on top of that workroom. Yeah, the the one with the window is the workroom. And then above that is like the quote unquote lantern room, which is more like a platform on top. Yeah, lantern balcony. Of course, in 1917, the tower was again replaced. And with wood and saltwater, you kind of get it. It's not not like a huge surprise. That's still a solid 12 years. This time they replaced it with a skinny, primidal concrete tower.

30:24 It was thirty nine feet white with a fixed red light and it had a metal ladder on the outside. So like accessing the light was all exterior. So they didn't have like a workroom or anything anymore. So it's blurry. But this is a picture of what we have today. So it's just like this little huh. It's cute. It's got a little platform so you can access the light and the ladder on the outside. And that's pretty much all there is to it. So and this style of light was really, really easy to maintain. So they kind of popped up all over the island in replacements of other stuff. So I was going to say that's unfortunate because it's not as cool as a lot of other lighthouse.

31:04 But if it stays in service, if it's makes sense, if it's consistent with the area, then it is cool. So yeah, and having variation is kind of what makes the other ones cool. Like I can look at this right and right away be like, oh, it's not as cool as the other ones, but it serves its purpose. So I bet they have a high ladder so no one can just walk up to they do. I think you have to like unlock it and it'll drop down or something. I imagine people just up there all the time. It's like no 1922, the last keeper at this lighthouse. Sorry. Wait, what? I know it's not like this is like one of those times where I just start putting everything like, oh, it's comments like, what was I saying?

31:52 I'm thinking I was saying the last keeper ended in 1922 when the Coast Guard kind of took over. Well, the Coast Guard didn't take over a lot of lighthouses until 1939. So I think because this one didn't need to be manned at all, that Coast Guard just took it over to help. Early on. Yeah, they could get there. And they converted it to solar power in 2009. So really, they didn't need any sort of interaction with. Yeah, 2000. That sounds about right. I was going to say that's late, but not really. 1996, the Lyna Restoration Foundation signed a 30 year lease with the Coast Guard and assumed responsibility of this lighthouse. And I have their website in our show notes so you guys can take a look.

32:34 They had responsibility of a lot of really cool historical sites and buildings and stuff in Lyna. But the fire in August of last year destroyed literally almost everything in this town. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that because today that we're recording is the 21st and phase one of the report about what happened, how it happened. Fire Safety Research Institute has been building a report of this incident since then. So it's being released this week. It released on the 17th. So four days ago. And so I just kind of took notes from the summary of what they were saying caused this.

33:16 I'll talk a little bit about it, but a little background. Most people, I mean, this everybody heard about this fire. This was like really devastating. It was the deadliest fire, deadliest US fire in over a century. So it's a big thing. But beginning on August 8th and I think it ended around August 11th of 2023, a fire went through Maui, almost completely destroying the town of Lahaina, killing 101 people total. And I think two are still missing. So it kind of just assumed. Over 3000 buildings were destroyed and had five point five billion dollars in damages. I mean, this place was absolutely leveled and I'm going to pull up Google Maps because they've taken, you know how they do like the aerial footage.

33:58 They've taken it since then and it's just absolutely crazy to see if you zoom in. That is insane. So it's all this like blackened area, but then you you zoom in on the houses and it's just. It's just gone. Yeah, there's just nothing. Foundations only. I wish it would clear up a little. But yeah, it's just all you can see is remnants and the trees are all burnt and it just sucks. A couple of houses standing in there. Yeah, maybe they're built since then. Oh, yeah. The concrete's too perfect. Looks new, yeah. I think the survivors were given like seven hundred dollars. Yes. It's my ass. Insane. Here's seven hundred dollars. It's like that is just a slap in the face.

34:42 All sorts of conspiracies about this fire. The report came out. It's phase one. There's two more phases coming. I know the last phase is how you can keep this from happening again or what changes need to be made. Updates and blah, blah. So code. And yeah, I can't remember what phase two is, but I know there's three phases. So Hawaiian Electric admitted that a downed power line in the morning of August 8th started a fire and they denied that the fire caused the one that spread later in the afternoon because firefighters said that they extinguished that fire. There was like a small team in Lahaina responded to it. Yeah. And it was like around two seventeen or something that they reported that it was extinguished and left.

35:26 But then around two fifty five, a fire had spread from the exact same area. So it's like it's pretty clear that. The fire hadn't been totally extinguished and some members, some like speck of ash or something had just continued the fire after they had left 30 minutes later. That's the official statement, though. It was extinguished. Yeah, officially, they're saying that there was no fire when they left. So a couple of things contributed. This is from the summary. I'm also going to put that in our show notes so people can actually look at it themselves. It's like 200 pages long. So, wow, you can look at everything. But a lot of things contributed to the fire becoming so deadly. Part of it was that Hurricane Dora had been passing by Hawaii.

36:12 It was like 500 miles offshore, but the wind was crazy. It was like a windstorm going on. So they had alerts out just saying, like, don't be on the water. We're going to we're going to see power lines knock over. We're going to see like lots of debris and stuff. And so 40 percent of Maui's firefighting forces were on another part of the island fighting other fires because there were more than just this fire going on. And Lahaina only had a very small team in charge of it because it's small compared to the size of Maui, you know, so it's just like, OK, you guys, we have to go. But you guys stay here and you're in charge of this. A part of it is that cellular and Internet services are really spotty there and the wind was making it worse.

36:54 And so it's difficult for people to call for help, to call the firefighters and be like, hey, there's a fire. The winds made it difficult for responders to use their radios and also stoked any fires that there were like popping up. And so they got out of control way faster. A lot of the evacuation roads that are specifically for fires were blocked by downed power lines. So people couldn't use evacuation routes to get out. Emergency officials did not use the extensive network of emergency sirens. This was like a big thing that people talked about. They have tons of their sirens. Yeah, their sirens are just and there's no real explanation for why they didn't use it.

37:35 They just said that they didn't think it was appropriate to use the sirens for this instance, which when you read about the official statement for what the sirens are for, wildfires is listed. So it's it was appropriate. So I don't know what they're talking about. There was prolonged drought in the area, which didn't help. And this goes back to the guys who came in for their sugar plantations and their pineapple plantations. When Westerners came in the 19th century and turned lots of their land into plantations, abandoned them in the 19 the late 1900s. They became overrun with invasive grasses that were dried out because of the drought. So basically, there's this this big open span of kindling for fires to rush along.

38:22 The wind pushed thick smoke close to the ground so people couldn't see anything or see where they were going. Lots of firefighting crews became trapped by the blaze and had to abandon their trucks and equipment. So then those were all just totally lost. And then as houses burnt down, water lines failed. So the water pressure at fire hydrants went down to zero because there's no there's water freely flowing out of every house that's being burnt. So there's no water pressure. Basically, there's nothing anyone could do. And on top of that, they were trapped from leaving because of these evacuation routes not being clear. So the whole world also heard about what is it the banyan tree?

39:04 Banyan? I didn't look up that. The big. Yeah. The old tree being burnt by the flames, though today it's showing signs of growth in like two thirds of it. So there's a third that's still dormant and they're hoping it's kind of like waking from a coma kind of thing where it's crazy. Like eventually it may be at full strength again, but right now it's just kind of like tentatively growing. So. Really, really awful. You guys should go and read the report because there's tons of details about it, but basically it's just like really awful circumstances. This windstorm made it hard in general to control fires, but is the lighthouse gone?

39:46 The lighthouse survived. Lighthouse is one of the very few things that survived in Lyna, and it's still there. I have a picture of it after, but there's lots of things that went wrong, but really it just highlighted the many things that could have been done differently to save these people. And there's all these really awful stories. I remember when it happened, people were talking about what it was like to be in the fire, you know, like what they saw and like having to leave your house knowing that it's going to burn to the ground. A lot of people trying to help their neighbors or like seeing people on fire. Like it was just there's all these horrible, really awful stories. I didn't like attach any into our show notes, but you can look them up. There's lots of people.

40:28 Disaster. Yeah. Talking about it. I think it's important to hear about what people went through because hopefully things will be done differently in the future. God forbid there's ever another fire, but that something else needs to happen so that this people trapped in a burning town, like there's no way to get out. Where are you supposed to go? There's like stories of people that drive to their friend's house in another town and it's on fire too. So then it's like, where do we go? There's like all these people that had to jump into the ocean in the middle of the night and they can't see anything because of the smoke and people are sick because of the smoke and terrifying. Yeah, there's problems with from the engineering side. I think it's interesting. There's problems with lots of infrastructure, but even I was at work talking with coworkers about fire code in architecture.

41:14 Yeah, and 9 11 and apparently one of the, you know, there's a bunch of research done. What happened at 9 11 the World Trade Centers and one of the things was that firefighters couldn't get up the stairs while people were evacuating down the stairs. This is in our Statue of Liberty episode. Yeah. Yes. Already already mentioned. No, no, it's good. That's just the boil down is that one of the lessons learned was fire stairways need to be wider. And it's my belief. Maybe I need to look this up to find out what the actual answer is. It's my belief that there was a report issued after 9 11 that said we need wider stairwells and real estate is really expensive in New York City. So older buildings probably didn't change, but new buildings probably did. Hopefully.

41:59 Yeah. But yeah, this we're looking at images of Lahaina. Yeah. Oh, too many people in one spot for an event like that. Yeah. It's the light still functioning. Looks pretty toasted. It was pretty tough. The towers there, obviously. But I bet they had to replace electrical and the lens. But other than that, it's probably fully functional. I wonder what the wake of this as far as construction goes, if there's a lot more ship traffic and the lighthouse is back in high demand. Yeah, I don't know. Or maybe with investigation still going on, the area is still ghost town. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, this picture is crazy because you can still see smoke and it just looks crazy.

42:42 But anyway, you can donate to help with recovery efforts to the Hawaii Community Foundation, the Maui Strong Fund. So if anybody feels so inclined to help them out, that's a good place that you can send your money so that it gets used appropriately. There's some other stories about the Maui Red Cross or something is not using the money appropriately. I don't know. I didn't look into it, but they're like, don't send your money there. Send it to something local so that they you know that 100 percent of your donations are being used for this. I don't know. I've heard talk about different large organizations that do things like that. Yeah, I'm sure the Red Cross does a lot of good, but there's it's not always so simple.

43:24 Yeah. And it's hard when it's such a big organization that, like, of course, you're going to have to use some donations as administrative fees and stuff and like to pay people. I don't know. It gets muddy. Some podcasts I listened to talked about addressing homelessness in certain California cities and how some people are making tons of money. Oh, no. Addressing the homelessness. Oh, no. It's kind of you know, if they were to be successful, then they wouldn't be in a job and their job is paying them a quarter million like. Yeah, I'm sure there's more complexity than I am. But at first glance, it's like when you see those giant churches and like the pastors, a billionaire or a millionaire or whatever.

44:05 Yeah. And it's like, you don't want to be doing something for people in need and be profiting off of it. That's like it's a dichotomy that's like not a good look. But you look at the screen now, we're looking at this image of Lahaina. It's like how maybe someone can reach out to us. What maybe that I've forgotten which organization you mentioned, but maybe that's the best way to help. Maybe there's another way. Foundation. Yeah, I did find that online. Someone asked, how do we donate where we know that our money is going to be useful? And a lot of local people said that to donate to the Hawaii Community Foundation. So I put a link in my show notes for that. The conspiracy was talking about how and I don't know who's behind writing this conspiracy.

44:48 Yeah, like multimillionaires and billionaires are buying this real estate now because because it's vacant because people are either dead or. Unhoused, I guess, because of their because of the fire. And so someone comes in and buys it and all of a sudden it's the most valuable. Open real estate, such a tragedy. It's like that's oddly convenient. I don't believe in the conspiracy, but I do think parts of it are unfortunately probably true as far as the purchasing and redevelopment of this. Any land in Hawaii, very valuable. Yeah, don't know. Sorry to leave this essential downer note.

45:28 Well, I mean, this is the most recent major event, and that's what we are covering through history here. Major events, the lighthouse is right there, so. Hopefully we can cover in some time that we learn something new and it's like Sanibel Island with the hurricanes that things are coming back and it's super nice to hear positive news. Yeah, so we'll keep an eye out and hopefully we'll have good news about this area and things can turn around. But for now, if you want to donate, that link is in my bio. You can read the report from the Fire Safety Research Institute as well in my show notes. And take a look at the Royal Family tree if you've if you've watched on YouTube, we'd appreciate a like or subscribe because my YouTube plug in our YouTube.

46:17 Yeah, I know it's not an appropriate time, but because you're probably viewing the images on YouTube, it would help us out a lot. We are doing good on YouTube. Yes. And for those of you that joined after listening to Jeremy's interview for us. Yeah, I'm lighthearted. Welcome. And we're super happy to have you. We've gotten a lot more followers and views since then. And we're just really happy that people have come here to listen to us chat, even when it's depressing. Happy to be a part of it. So. So you can see us on Instagram at the Lighthouse Lowdown. You can check us out online, Lighthouse Lowdown dot com, where you can listen to our podcasts and also look at our YouTube videos on there as well.

47:00 There's links to each of them so you can so you can watch. And even though this was sad, hopefully you want to listen to our next episode and we'll catch you next time on the Lighthouse Lowdown.