We Used to Know How to Do “Rescue!” 

Maui burned one month ago as of this writing. The poignant news story in USA Today about the catastrophe in Hawaii is “’Don’t forget about us’: Maui victims struggle one month after deadly fires.”

No mention of the children. No photographs of frightened and grieving parents and grandparents holding up signs showing photographs of their laughing, sun-kissed children — toddlers and school-age children in paradise settings with the vast blue ocean as a backdrop.

Where are the children?

…Ring around the rosie…¹

The Honolulu Star Advertiser reported that “1,757 West Maui students — or 60% of the total enrollment — have not transferred to public schools elsewhere or may have enrolled in private schools, moved out of state, or are unaccounted for,” according to the local Department of Education.² The Governor of Hawaii, who has proved his incompetence (see below), declares many children are likely to be among the 850 people still missing in the Maui wildfires.³ Numbers of missing, and especially missing children, are “all over the place,” declares,“ Hot Air.⁴

a pocket full of posies…

Lest our imaginations fail us, let us remember that Hawaii is a series of islands.

Maui is one island among several. To arrive or leave an island, one must go via airplane or boat. Surely there were passenger manifests of travelers following the fire — both for transport leaving the island of Maui and certainly for passengers departing from the Hawaiian Islands for the mainland. Failing any kind of traveler lists, there are security cameras everywhere, from Ring doorbells to street cameras, all the security that is present in shipping ports and airports.

In contrast to the mainland, one cannot jump a freight train or thumb a ride to another state incognito.

The Deadliest Wildfire in Modern US History

On a national, even international level, the Lahaina fire is being called the deadliest wildfire in modern US history. PBS reports:⁵

At least 2,200 buildings were damaged or destroyed in West Maui…nearly all of them residential. Across the island, damage was estimated at close to $6 billion. The Upcountry fire affected 544 structures, most of them homes. As many as 4,500 people are in need of shelter, county officials said on Facebook, citing figures from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Pacific Disaster Center.

But coverage is scarce, switching quickly to a hurricane named, of all things, Hilary, that swept over California and into Nevada, followed by a bizarre event at the Burning Man festival that has caused over 70,000 people to be ordered to shelter in place in the middle of a desert turned to a sea of mud with failing sanitation and food and water in short supply.⁶

Meanwhile, where are the children of Lahaina? Where are their parents?

Ashes, ashes….

Where is the wall of flowers, teddy bears, toys, photographs, and messages? The impromptu memorial that always springs up near the site of a disaster visited by survivors and their neighbors. There are still 1,757 missing children. Where did they go? Where are their families?

They all fall down…

And where is the meeting place for survivors to seek help, and where the shell-shocked can find each other again?

The 1968 Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak

In 1968 the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak occurred in Indiana and a half dozen neighboring states where I lived as a young teenager. We heard that Greentown, Indiana, where our dearest family friends lived, had been decimated.⁷ We heard there were deaths, and later learned that over 141 souls perished that day in Indiana.

My parents gathered supplies, loaded up our VW bus with fruit, snacks, and water, and we headed south to locate our friends. Driving through the rural countryside, I gazed out the back window. Huge high-wire electrical transmission towers, usually looking like giant steel figures marching through fields alongside the roads, were bent and twisted. Wires, ripped from their fasteners, tangled on the ground and in bent steel beams.

The power of the tornado was evidenced in the contorted metal and in 100-year-old trees uprooted like weeds. Where a twister touched the ground, the raw earth was exposed as though a tractor had turned the soil. Twisters are called ‘the Finger of God’ for a reason. Capricious and indefensible, they overturn lives as easily as soil in the blink of an eye.

Upon arrival at Greentown, we discovered the streets had not been cordoned off. We drove past where our friends’ two-story home used to stand, housing a family of five siblings, two parents, and assorted dogs and cats. The entire block was flattened, blown away, with a few partial chimneys remaining.

My dad located the designated emergency meeting place downtown. He was able to check a list posted on a wall, determining that our friends, the Smith family, had checked in and were safe. We later learned that the dogs, cats, and even the guinea pigs had survived. We left the fruit and water and drove back home, reassured that they were alive.

Americans Know What to Do When Disaster Strikes

Americans know what to do when disasters hit. We have been doing rescue, survival, and restoration for as long as we have had communities, from the first small outposts dotting the East Coast to the spread and growth of towns and cities across this amazing land.

We know how to “do” rescue. Many of us learned in our youth, during Scouts or other volunteer organizations. Many of us have served in the armed forces, as EMTs or police, or as a member of volunteer fire departments, or we have had training in CPR and first aid. My father was a member of the ski patrol in its infancy, in New York State. Now, most communities and certainly most regions have established Red Cross offices.

Rescue begins when an alarm goes up. There is a fire, a tornado, a hurricane, a flood, or some other disaster. People gather to help stem the damage, set up a central meeting place, start keeping a list of survivors (and those lost), gather supplies to sustain everyone, comfort the stricken, and start the clean-up and the restoration. Temporary housing is arranged, care for children is established, and the beginnings of a return to normalcy occur amidst the comforting of those who have been through the traumatic experience and loss of family, friends, community, and home.

Rescue Was Missing In Maui

On Maui during that fateful fire and thereafter, little or no rescue was done.⁸

• No alarm sounded when the fire threatened Lahaina
• Telephone service was down from early in the morning before the fire started. “Nobody called us. Our phones didn’t work from five in the morning. The fire was not until 10 o’clock when I went to work.”⁹
• Police stopped traffic and blocked exits from the town
• Children were told to stay home on that school day¹⁰
• Water was shut off as the fire threatened the community
• The fire raged for hours, but no military fire-ships or hospital ships came
• People were driven into the ocean as the fire swept up to the shoreline
• It took hours for the Coast Guard to pull everyone from the water
• The military was not called in to assist in water rescues and did not arrive on their own for humanitarian rescue
• Local officials were not in town on the day of the fire¹¹
• Civilian assistance, including bottled water, food, and basic supplies, were turned away

Diana West has documented the number of children unaccounted for weeks after the fire in her article “Where Are 2025 Missing Lahaina Schoolchildren?” Many others have gathered and published first-person accounts and video footage of the horrors that occurred on that day.^12,13

Questions About Maui Fires Keep Coming

Several new issues have occurred to me in the month since the disastrous Maui fire.

• Where are the numbers of hospitalized patients?
• Where are the lists of missing adults, let alone children?
• Where is the memorial wall?
• Where are the newspaper stories with photographs of those who died?
• Where are the hero stories, the brave rescue stories?
• Where are the first-person accounts of escape, save for a few on social media? This is the stuff that newspapers and other media used to excel at — telling the individual stories of a disaster and exposing corruption, incompetence, and malfeasance when suspected. This is the stuff of Pulitzer Prizes.
• Where are the joint Chinese and US troops who have been drilling humanitarian aid and disaster relief exercises for ten years together in Hawaii as well as in China?¹⁴
• Where is the fundraising for Lahaina, other than that being sponsored by a collection of billionaires,¹⁵ including Oprah, who seem to have conflicts of interest relating to the town?¹⁶ Oprah has purchased over 2,000 acres of land on Maui. Since the fire, she has been questioned as her property was untouched by the fires and criticized for not donating her own money to the relief effort.¹⁷
• Where is the federal aid promised? “’I didn’t get any help,’: Maui residents struggle despite Biden’s vow of aid,” according to The Guardian.¹⁸
• How much of Hawaii’s cultural heritage and indigenous cultural artifacts were lost? Lahaina is the historical seat of the Hawaiian indigenous peoples.¹⁹

Too Many Mistakes to Be Accidental?

Nothing happened as it should have that day. There are too many “mistakes” for these to be mistakes or a collection of oversights or errors or “crossed wires.”    

People were burned alive that day in their cars, waiting to be allowed to depart downtown Lahaina on the only highway out of town as police blockaded the road. Children and their pets were alone in their homes as the fire consumed them.

In a swarm of mysteries arising from the Maui catastrophe, a few questions really stand out. What could have possibly caused such a hot but pinpoint fire, that human remains were reduced to a fine ash.²⁰ The fire was burning one building but not another, leaving trees standing, needles and leaves intact next to the ash footprint of completely burned homes, causing aluminum to melt and puddle like water, and setting boats on fire that were moored offshore.²¹

Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs)

Some theories are questioning whether modern warfare weaponry called DEWs (Direct Energy Weapons), designed to impede or destroy enemies were used against Lahaina. DEW weapons gather and project energy through a laser beam.²² The weapons can be built into the nose of a plane or be located on the ground or on ships or mobile land vehicles.²³ Interest and development in DEW weaponry by nations is on the rise, and DEWs are considered weapons of choice against drones.²⁴

DEW weaponry has also been suspected, as an alternative to coordinated arson, in the wildfires that have consumed parts of Canada in 2023²⁵ and earlier wildfires in California.²⁶ A part-time college instructor teaching sociology and criminology in California was indicted in 2021 and charged with five counts of arson relating to the California Dixie fire that consumed more than 963,000 acres. A feature article on the accused professor arsonist documents that as of 2022, he was still in jail awaiting trial.²⁷ He declares he is innocent and that he loves trees and wouldn’t hurt them.

The discussion about DEWS being responsible for the Lahaina fire centers around the fact that the fire was hot enough to melt aluminum, was pinpoint accurate, taking some buildings, sparing others, and was able to absolutely consume buildings, leaving only an ash footprint. This kind of damage has been seen in other recent fires, including the Paradise, California fire in 2018.²⁸ The suggested motive offered to support this theory is the increasing value, location, and desirability of the land, which can be seized and rebuilt after the fire clears out the inhabitants.

How Hot Can Forest Fires Burn?

Forest fires can burn on average as high as 1,472 degrees Fahrenheit,²⁹ with extreme conditions boosting heat up to 2100 degrees Fahrenheit. Aluminum has a melting point of 1200 degrees Fahrenheit, and if the metal is an aluminum alloy (combined with other metals), the melting point is higher.³⁰ So there is a crossover point where a “natural” forest fire can burn hot enough to melt some metals. But the boats catching fire while moored in the water? Are the trees standing with needles or leaves still intact in Lahania?

These are all unanswered questions.

National Park Service has declared, “Even though fire is a fairly common occurrence, very few fires become extremely large.”³¹ This historical fact indicates that human malfeasance of one sort or another may be the flash point leading to the increasingly large wildfires now occurring.

Organized Human Evil

On the heels of the COVID years, we are alert to keeping our eyes wide open to the possibility of organized human evil as a causative factor in the increasing disasters. A full discussion of evil is an ongoing topic that requires a lot of time, a steady gaze, a steely will, and abundant courage. We continue to try to armor ourselves to be able to look clearly at unfolding circumstances. Our book, COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We are the Prey, is an exploration of evil at its root.

After overwhelming incidents of neglect, seeming ignorance, outright lying, and the ignoring of science and scientific and medical principles with resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and countless created disabilities stemming from failure to treat the initial infection and, worse, assaulting a majority of the population with experimental, toxic and now proven deadly injections of mRNA and DNA “vaccines” we are facing the undeniable evil afoot in our world.

A collection of international billionaire elites, celebrities, and global corporations unmoored from any alliance with nations of origin really do want to run the world. And they want a lot less of us pesky human beings cluttering up their playground.³²

The world is quickly trying to move past the COVID deaths and other casualties of the COVID years. We lost so many of our elderly in hospitals, murdered on ventilators. Other elders and the general population were criminally neglected and refused conventional upper respiratory treatments, developing severe illnesses resulting in death or disability. Many of the elders who contracted COVID were sent into nursing homes where they were not provided with treatment and infected others in the facilities.³³

The miracle treatments, those that would have brought COVID under control so quickly — hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, plus zinc, antibiotics, steroids if needed, and supplements, were forbidden and withheld nationwide and in many parts of the world.

We have turned our backs on the COVID dead, millions of them.³⁴

Are we now expected to forget Maui? Are we going to let these deaths, these parents and especially these children, slip away?

…Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Primary author Ginger Ross Breggin

References:

¹ Behind the Song Lyrics and Meaning of “Ring Around the Rosie” – American Songwriter

² Lahaina parents grill DOE officials on interim plans, safety | Honolulu Star-Advertiser (staradvertiser.com)

³ Many children likely among the 850 people still missing in Maui wildfires, governor says (msn.com)

⁴ The numbers of children missing in Lahaina are all over the place – HotAir

⁵ Lahaina fire becomes deadliest in the U.S. in over 100 years as death toll rises to 93 | PBS NewsHour

⁶ Live updates: Burning Man festival rain strands thousands in Black Rock, Nevada desert (cnn.com)

⁷ https://www.britannica.com/event/Palm-Sunday-tornado-outbreak-of-1965

⁸ https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/links-to-testimonies-and-perspectives

⁹ What is a satellite city? Maui County Council resident goes viral over fiery speech condemning Oprah and Jeff Bezos (sportskeeda.com)

¹⁰ The Death of the Grown-Up | Diana West > Home – Where Are 2,025 Missing Lahaina Schoolchildren?

¹¹ The Death of the Grown-Up | Diana West > Home – Lahaina Mayor Won’t Say Where He Was During Fire

¹² https://sagehana.substack.com/archive?sort=new

¹³ https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/links-to-testimonies-and-perspectives

¹⁴ U.S. and China to Hold Joint Drills Despite Trade War and Tensions (newsweek.com)

¹⁵ How The Billionaires With Homes On Maui Are Responding To The Island’s Wildfires (msn.com)

¹⁶ ‘You Got What You Wanted’: Outraged Hawaii Resident Blames Oprah Winfrey for Maui Wildfires Amid Reports About Her Growing Popularity on Social Media (atlantablackstar.com)

¹⁷ ‘Ain’t Them Your Neighbors?’: Oprah Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson’s Relief Fund for Maui Wildfire Victims Backfires After Critics Question Why the Mogul Isn’t Using Her Own Money (atlantablackstar.com)

¹⁸ ‘I didn’t get any help’: Maui residents struggle despite Biden’s vow of aid | Hawaii fires | The Guardian

¹⁹ Maui cultural heritage destroyed in wildfires : NPR

²⁰ Lahaina death toll remains unclear as Hawaii authorities near the end of their search – CBS News

²¹ Lahaina, Hawaii – Residents Report Very Unusual Patch Fires That Melt Aluminum – WorldNews (wn.com)

²² Directed Energy | Lockheed Martin

²³ Science & Tech Spotlight: Directed Energy Weapons | U.S. GAO

²⁴ Science & Tech Spotlight: Counter-Drone Technologies | U.S. GAO

²⁵ Are Canadian eco-terrorists causing all the fires? | National Post

²⁶ VIDEO: Were The Devastating California Wildfires Caused By Directed-Energy Weapons? – The Clover Chronicle

²⁷ How Professor Gary Maynard Burned Down (nymag.com)

²⁸ Fire destroyed Paradise five years ago. The pain remains – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

²⁹ At what temperature does a forest fire burn? (wildfiretoday.com)

³⁰ Melting Points of Metals | OnlineMetals.com®

³¹ Wildland Fire Spread and Suppression (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)

³² https://WeAreThePrey.com

³³ https://WeAreThePrey.com

³⁴ Breggin.com | We are the Prey

Image: AP