Nick Grube, Honolulu Civil Beat

Senators urged to examine Tulsi Gabbard’s ‘deep and intense’ ties to Hawaii sect

A former member of a secretive Hawaiʻi religious sect is warning members of Congress about the potential dangers of confirming Tulsi Gabbard as President-elect Donald Trump’s next director of national intelligence.

Anita van Duyn says she spent 15 years inside the Science of Identity Foundation, a fringe offshoot of Hare Krishna that was formed in the 1970s and has been described by defectors as a cult.

Van Duyn has sent letters to Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, detailing Gabbard’s deep ties to the organization and its reclusive founder, Chris Butler, who still resides in a multimillion-dollar beachfront home in Kailua.

The letters come as Gabbard is trying to salvage her nomination on Capitol Hill this week after national security experts, former colleagues and others have openly questioned her fitness for the job, with many of the criticisms centered on her lack of intelligence experience, her parroting of Russian propaganda and sympathies for international strongmen, such as Syria’s recently deposed President Bashar al-Assad whom she visited in 2017.

The van Duyn letters outline what she says are Butler’s long-standing political ambitions and the ways he groomed and supported his disciples in their pursuit of public office while promoting his own ideologies, which include a long history of espousing anti-gay rhetoric.

Van Duyn says she worries that Gabbard is still under Butler’s influence, which could compromise national security, noting in her letter that she suspects that any sensitive intelligence Gabbard is privy to will be “communicated to her guru.”

Erika Tsuji, a spokesperson for Gabbard, did not respond to Civil Beat requests for an interview with Gabbard about her relationship with Butler and the Science of Identity Foundation.

Trump’s transition team similarly did not respond to requests for comment.

Van Duyn pointed to Gabbard’s shifting political allegiances and constant upward trajectory as evidence that she’s following Butler’s playbook, from running as a progressive anti-war Democrat in 2020 to going all-in on Trump’s second-term agenda that includes promises of pardons for Jan. 6 rioters, rolling back environmental regulations and mass deportation.

“Everybody is thinking her allegiance is to Trump, but in reality her allegiance was already given away to her guru,” van Duyn said in an interview with Civil Beat. “You can’t just go in and out of that. That’s a lifetime commitment.”

Throughout her public life, Gabbard has been dogged by her ties to the Science of Identify Foundation and Butler, in particular, who has openly described Gabbard as a star pupil.

While Gabbard has tried to downplay this relationship — often criticizing questions about it as an attempt to foment religious bigotry — experts say it shouldn’t be dismissed so easily, especially because if confirmed she’ll be responsible for leading 18 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and NSA, and overseeing a budget of nearly $75 billion.

Scholars specializing in cultic studies and new religious movements said the Science of Identity Foundation displays many of the characteristics that define a cult, which raises questions about whether Gabbard has the judgment and autonomy required to advise the president on matters of national security.

“It is problematic if people in the government making choices for millions of people are being exploited by these manipulative gurus,” Wind Goodfriend, a professor of experimental psychology at Buena Vista University in Iowa, said. While there’s no singular definition for what makes a cult, she said one hallmark is whether a group is “promoting prejudice and stigma that is destructive and harmful.”

Stephen Kent, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Alberta, said those who have defected from the Science of Identity Foundation and been willing to speak out have called Butler an authoritarian, narcissistic leader and described troubling experiences, including verbal abuse, sleep and food deprivation and children being forced to listen to lectures that are “deeply homophobic and sometimes sexually graphic.”

Followers bow to altars of Butler and treat objects that he’s touched or leftover scraps of food as holy relics. If they leave they often find themselves ostracized by the group, including friends and family.

Gabbard has been vague about her own experiences in the group and in 2017 told a reporter for The New Yorker magazine she’d never heard Butler say anything mean or hateful about anyone. “I can speak to my own personal experience and, frankly, my gratitude to him, for the gift of this wonderful spiritual practice that he has given to me, and to so many people,” she said.

Kent said it’s clear that Gabbard’s relationship with Butler and his Science of Identity Foundation is “deep and intense.” As a result it should be acceptable for her to be questioned about how her spiritual values might color her worldview, especially since there’s concern she might be operating from any “prejudicial notions” stemming from Butler’s teachings.

Another concern echoes van Duyn, the former disciple. What would happen, he said, if she went against Butler’s wishes?

“Anybody who studies guru-based groups knows that what’s ultimately important is pleasing the guru, not saying or doing anything that upsets or challenges the guru,” Kent said. “Would there be blowback? Would there be repercussions for her were she to take a national security position in contradistinction to Butler’s decisions?”

Jeannie Bishop, who is listed in nonprofit tax records as president of the Science of Identity Foundation, did not respond to a request for comment.

Gabbard’s private and public life has sometimes been twisted up with Butler’s world. She was born into the Science of Identity Foundation and her parents, Carol and Mike Gabbard, a state senator, have been prominent figures in the group.

Throughout her political career, Gabbard has maintained ties with Butler and his followers, whether hiring them to staff her congressional office or work on her 2020 presidential campaign. Her husband, Abraham Williams, has deep roots in the organization.

Science of Identity members have donated to her campaigns, sign-waved on her behalf and even staffed her most ambitious political endeavors, most prominently her run for president. In some cases, these followers were simply volunteering their time and efforts. In others, they were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Whether senators seize on Gabbard’s ties to Butler and the Science of Identity Foundation is another matter altogether.

She already faces an uphill battle based on her lack of intelligence experience, questionable liaisons with international leaders, such as Syriaʻs al-Assad, and embracement of Russian talking points. Earlier this month, nearly 100 former national security officials signed a letter telling senators they were “alarmed” at the prospect of Gabbard leading the nation’s intelligence community.

Senators could open themselves up to counterattacks if they target Gabbard over her religion, said Todd Belt, professor and director of George Washington University’s political management program. He pointed to Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her own ties to a secretive Christian group known as the People of Praise, which embraces strict and traditional gender roles for men and women.

As a nominee, Barrett faced numerous questions about her religion and how it might influence her work. But when the late U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein declared that “the dogma lives loudly within you” it became a rallying cry for her defense and quickly put Democrats in the crosshairs of those alleging religious persecution.

Being director of national intelligence, however, puts Gabbard in a unique position, Belt said, one in which questions about her religious affiliations might be warranted. Intelligence agencies vet their employees to make sure they don’t have any conflicts of interest and to make sure there isn’t anything in their past that puts them at risk of extortion or bribery at the expense of national security.

“People are free to choose their religion,” Belt said. “The question is, to what extent does an appointee believe in the separation of church and state, and whether or not there will be a conflict of commitment in terms of the commitment to the religion and the commitment to protect the nation.”

Larry Pfeiffer, head of the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security at George Mason University and former chief of staff to Hayden when he was director of the CIA, said Gabbard’s extensive history with the Science of Identity Foundation and Butler means there’s “definitely room for questions.”

But Pfeiffer also sees potential danger for senators trying to pin a no-vote solely on those connections. Other more concrete examples, he said, show that she doesn’t exhibit the competence and trustworthiness that’s required for the position.

The director of national intelligence has a direct line to the president and is responsible for preparing the daily briefing about potential dangers facing the U.S. and its allies. Having someone who recites Russian talking points and is “easily influenced by conspiracy theories,” he said, might not be the best pick.

Still, there are legitimate avenues of inquiry about Gabbard’s past considering the close proximity of Butler and his acolytes, from working inside her congressional office to playing significant roles in her campaigns, including when she ran for president in 2020.

“Your expectation is that a Director of National Intelligence is going to be this impartial broker of intelligence information to national leadership,” Pfeiffer said. “And if there’s any question that that individual is under some undue influence by anybody, a religious figure, a corporate figure, a foreign figure, that raises questions about their ability to be impartial.”

Property owners profiting as Maui residents are forced from their homes

Honolulu Civil Beat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on Hawaii. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Reporting Highlights

Tempting Offers: State and federal officials looking to house victims of the Maui wildfires offered lucrative rates to convince property owners to sign up.
“FEMA Fever”: Tenants, housing advocates, government officials and even landlords say those high prices have encouraged property owners to chase the money.
Soaring Prices: People who have been pushed from their homes are contending with a housing market where the median rent has jumped 44%. Some said they haven’t found permanent homes.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

A year ago, after a deadly wildfire displaced thousands of residents of Lahaina, Hawaii’s governor and lieutenant governor invoked a state law blocking most evictions and prohibiting price gouging. The emergency order soon became a tool to prevent widespread displacement of all Maui residents, including people struggling to pay rent because they had lost work due to the fire.

Despite that order, some Maui property owners have capitalized on the crisis by pushing out tenants and housing wildfire survivors for more money. Among those displaced: a couple and their two young children who, according to court records, were evicted so their landlord’s son could move in while renting his own home to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s housing program for $8,000 a month.

Some property owners have brought in more than twice the going rate for a long-term rental by signing up with FEMA or another aid program. They have received lucrative property tax breaks for housing wildfire survivors, in some cases worth more than $10,000 a year.

Other landlords have forced out tenants and sought people who will pay more. Over the course of several months, one landlord tried to evict his tenants for different reasons, even claiming that Maui’s mayor needed to use the house as a “command center to rebuild Lahaina.” (A spokesperson for the mayor said that claim was false.) After the tenants moved out, two of them saw their ocean-view apartment listed online for $6,800 a month rather than the $4,200 they had paid. Asked about the higher price, the landlord told Civil Beat and ProPublica that the apartment has been cleaned up and is now furnished.

Complaints about evictions and rent increases have circulated for months. Housing advocates say Gov. Josh Green’s administration hasn’t moved aggressively enough to tighten the rules and that the Hawaii attorney general has overlooked abuses.

Even before the fires swept across Maui, rental housing on the island was among the most expensive in the country. The loss of so many homes was bound to increase prices. But tenants, housing advocates, government officials and even landlords say high prices offered by FEMA, the state and private aid organizations have encouraged property owners to chase the money. State Sen. Angus McKelvey, who lost his own home in Lahaina, called it “FEMA fever.”

Jo Wessel, a Colorado landlord, said she tried to sign up with FEMA after her tenants fell behind on their rent and electricity bills. She said a property management company working for FEMA offered her $6,500 a month, which according to court records was more than twice what she charged for the two-bedroom condominium in Kahului. Although the governor’s order bars evictions for nonpayment of rent or utilities, Wessel told Lea and David Vitello and their two children on Jan. 6 that they had five days to pay up or leave, according to documents reviewed by Civil Beat and ProPublica. Two weeks later, FEMA inspectors knocked on the Vitellos’ door to see if their home was suitable for wildfire survivors. “We didn’t see it coming,” Lea Vitello said.

The Vitellos refused to leave when their lease expired at the end of January, and Wessel eventually took them to court. It took until April for the Vitellos to find a new place and move out. Wessel said the delay caused her to miss out on the FEMA contract, but she was able to sign up with a nonprofit housing program willing to pay about $400 more per month than what she was charging the Vitellos. Wessel said she thought the Vitellos had taken advantage of the governor’s order and that they still owe her money. Although the Vitellos left a few months ago, Wessel’s court case against them continued until this week, when a judge dismissed it.

Those who have been forced out are contending with a housing market where the median rent has jumped 44% since before the fires, according to an Argonne National Laboratory study released last week. Some people who’ve been pushed out since the fires told Civil Beat and ProPublica that they haven’t yet found a permanent home.

Peter Sunday, whose family was evicted so their landlord’s son could move in, said he paid just $1,900 a month for their three-bedroom cottage and that the cheapest place he has found since is twice as much. He, his wife and their two young children have moved from place to place while they search for something stable.

Malcolm Vincent, the landlord’s son, said in a court filing that he lived in a garage on family property after he rented his home to FEMA and while he was waiting for the Sundays to leave. When called by Civil Beat and ProPublica, Vincent said he was busy and hung up. In response to a text message, he wrote, “Stop.” Ann Siciak, the Sundays’ former landlord, did not respond to interview requests.

State and federal officials said they didn’t intend for their housing programs to encourage landlords to kick people out to make room for wildfire survivors, but they had to offer lucrative rates in order to secure housing quickly. “We’re not incentivizing,” FEMA Region 9 Administrator Bob Fenton said in an interview. “What we’re doing is being competitive.”

The Green administration acknowledged that “some bad actors have not complied” with the governor’s order. Officials urged tenants to report unscrupulous landlords to the state attorney general.

Green said in an interview that he, too, has heard about landlords who have kicked out tenants to make more money, but he said they “represent the extreme minority.” Much more common, he said, are stories of people who did the right thing and provided shelter to thousands of people.

“I was very clear that we didn’t want to displace anybody, but there are a million different forces at play here,” Green said. “Every moment, every week, you just had to try to prevent predatory behavior. There’s a lot of that. That’s one of the lessons I learned from this crisis.”

State officials pointed to a sharp drop in eviction cases filed in court since the fire as evidence that the governor’s order is “doing what it was designed to do: stop unlawful evictions and keep families and survivors housed.”

But tenants’ rights groups and lawyers said court cases, the only public paper trail of evictions, don’t show the complete picture. It’s time-consuming and risky for a tenant to fight an eviction in court; if they lose, they’ll have a record that could make it harder to rent another place. Many tenants simply move out after getting a notice to vacate the property, even when they think their landlord is breaking the law.

“We know this is happening,” said Jade Moreno, a researcher and policy analyst for the Maui Housing Hui, a tenants’ rights organization. “We hear the stories all the time.”

'The greed is sickening'

Although most people refer to FEMA when they complain that emergency housing programs have skewed the market, the state of Hawaii pays similar rates for its own program. And in November, in an effort to entice property owners, the governor revealed just how much money could be made housing people who were homeless after the fire.

Thousands of wildfire survivors were living in hotel rooms at the time, costing the state at least $1 million a day; meanwhile, vacation rental homes that would have been cheaper sat vacant. So Green announced that the state would pay a premium to anyone who housed survivors.

For landlords who typically rented to locals, the numbers offered by the state were stunning: $5,000 a month for a studio or one-bedroom home; $7,000 for a two-bedroom; $9,000 for a three-bedroom; and $11,000 for a four-bedroom.

Early on, FEMA also concluded that it would have to pay vacation rental rates. FEMA won’t publicize what it pays, saying it varies by property. But contracts reviewed by Civil Beat and ProPublica show the agency has paid $5,000 to $9,050 for a one- or two-bedroom unit. For three- and four-bedroom homes, it has paid $9,000 to $11,400, according to two landlords who spoke to Civil Beat and ProPublica.

Once people knew what they could get, Maui-based property manager Claudia Garcia started getting calls. Property owners, many of whom lived on the mainland, asked if Garcia could help them lease to FEMA or raise their rents to keep pace. She said she refused because she didn't want to help them take advantage of the crisis. “The greed is sickening,” said Garcia, whose firm manages more than 100 rentals on the island. “It’s just not right what they’re doing.”

The Legal Aid Society of Hawaii got calls, too, but from tenants. In the first seven months after the fire, the number of Maui residents who sought help with evictions grew by 50% compared with the seven months before the fire, according to the organization.

The high prices offered by the state and FEMA forced at least one nonprofit that was sheltering victims of the fire to bump up its offers to property owners. “Short-term rental owners did shop us,” said Skye Kolealani Razon-Olds, who oversees the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement’s emergency housing and recovery programs. “They provided us with FEMA rental rates and asked if we could match it.”

Razon-Olds said the nonprofit has received 19 complaints from tenants who said they were being forced out of their homes so their landlords could rent to FEMA. She said her organization convinced FEMA to stop dealing with those owners.

In February, six months after the fire, FEMA announced that it would reject properties if it learned tenants had been illegally forced out “so landlords could gain higher rents from the FEMA program.” Officials told Civil Beat and ProPublica that FEMA has found fewer than 10 cases in which a landlord wrongfully ended a lease in order to participate in the housing program. In all those cases, FEMA removed the properties from the program.

State and federal officials characterized their rates as a compromise between vacation rental and long-term rates. The rates publicized by the state are maximums, state officials said; in practice, Hawaii is paying significantly less — about $228 per night rather than $267. That works out to about $6,800 per month rather than $8,000.

After state and local officials raised concerns, FEMA asked the Argonne National Laboratory to study whether housing programs had caused property owners to increase rents or displace residents.

Researchers concluded that the loss of housing in the fires was the biggest factor in the rapid increase in rental prices and that there wasn’t enough data to know how much housing programs had contributed. However, they noted that the Hawaii Office of Consumer Protection received about 700 housing-related complaints from August 2023 to April, most related to lease terminations or rent increases. Those complaints and subsequent investigations, researchers wrote, indicate that the “behavior of some landlords may have changed leading to secondary displacement or increased costs for some renter households outside of the burn area.”

One landlord, however, said it wasn’t until she was approached by a property management company working for FEMA that she decided to house wildfire survivors. The company offered Mara Lockwood $7,000 a month — about $2,300 more than what she had collected for her two-bedroom condo overlooking Maalaea Bay.

Lockwood took the deal, not just for the extra income, but because she would be exempt from property taxes for at least a year, which she said will save her about $12,000 annually. But she was conflicted. As the owner of a Maui real estate company, she saw the asking prices for rentals rise, and she kept hearing stories of people getting pushed out of their homes so that their landlords could earn more money.

“Kicking somebody out to rent to FEMA to make more money is a horrible thing to do to people,” Lockwood said. “But when you’re given an opportunity and money is involved — and you have to follow the money — then some people are going to do that.”

'That’s what the law allowed'

For every case in which it’s clear a tenant is being kicked out so their landlord can make more money, there are many more that aren’t as obvious, said Nick Severson, the lead housing attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Hawaii. “Sometimes we’ll have emails or texts or statements from the landlord that say, ‘I need you out of here so I can rent this for $8,000 a month to FEMA,’” he said. “But usually it’s not that lucky. It’s a little bit more covert, which makes it hard to push back on.”

That’s partly because the state law prohibiting price gouging during an emergency provides landlords with some wiggle room. Renters can be evicted if a landlord or family member is moving in or if the renter has violated the terms of their lease, as long as it’s not related to nonpayment of rent, utilities or similar charges. And landlords can push people out at the end of a fixed-term lease without providing any reason. In several cases reviewed by Civil Beat and ProPublica, landlords have cited those exceptions in evicting tenants and have gone on to rent their properties to wildfire survivors for more money.

Property owners acknowledge that they’re bringing in more money through housing programs than they did before the fire. According to the Hawaii attorney general, the governor’s emergency proclamation prevents landlords from raising their rent unless it was agreed to before Aug. 9 or the landlord can show their costs have increased.

And yet the attorney general has held property owners accountable in relatively few cases. The office has concluded that landlords violated the governor’s order in just 28 of the 200 complaints of illegal evictions and rent increases it had received as of June 3. (Another 30 were still under investigation.) Fenton, the FEMA administrator, said the attorney general’s office concluded that just one of the cases FEMA referred had violated the proclamation. The attorney general’s office can levy civil penalties of up to $10,000 a day, but it hasn’t.

“We have the emergency proclamation, but it doesn’t prevent anyone from evicting tenants and raising rent,” said Anne Barber, a Maui real estate broker who works with Garcia in her property management firm. “There is no accountability.”

The attorney general’s office said in a written statement that it “provides people with opportunities to do the right thing and correct their actions. If individuals continue to choose not to comply, then the Attorney General can and will seek legal remedies.”

The Green administration said it has revised the emergency proclamation to address the needs of the community; at one point, the governor added language barring unsolicited offers to buy property in areas affected by the fires. But, administration officials said, the governor’s power is limited. For example, they said he has no authority to force landlords to extend leases. Green’s staff said lawmakers must look at the price-gouging law and make needed changes.

In one case, Maui landlord Gregory Lussier filed an eviction case against six people living in a four-bedroom home in Kahului. He told Civil Beat and ProPublica that he wanted the tenants out because some of them had left and the remaining ones had stopped paying the full rent, which was about $4,000, but he knew the governor’s order prohibited him from evicting them for not paying. In his Jan. 5 notice to the tenants and the eviction case he filed in court against them a week and a half later, he cited several violations of the lease, including prohibitions on pets, smoking, illegal activity, expired vehicle registrations, and obscene or loud language. Before the case went to trial, the tenants moved out.

Although Lussier rented the property to FEMA’s housing program for $11,000 a month, he said that’s not why he filed eviction proceedings. “There was no premeditated scheme to force the tenant to leave so we could get a FEMA rental agency lease,” he said in an email. However, court records call into question his version of events. Lussier said the lease with FEMA’s outside property manager started Feb. 1 and he believes he signed the rental agreement the day before. He said he didn’t explore renting to the housing program until after the property was vacant and that the process of signing up took “several weeks.” But video of a hearing shows that Lussier and three of his tenants appeared in court on Jan. 29, where the tenants denied his allegations that they had violated the lease. Lussier declined to explain the discrepancy to Civil Beat and ProPublica.

Maui attorney Jack Naiditch said he’s gotten several phone calls from property owners who want to exploit loopholes in the emergency proclamation so they can take advantage of FEMA’s prices. He said he’s turned them away: “I’m not going to put my name on the line for somebody who’s fibbing.”

But he has represented a number of property owners in court, including Sunday’s landlord; some of them have later rented their homes to house wildfire survivors. He declined to discuss specifics of their cases.

When Sunday appeared in court in April, he pleaded with the judge to let his family stay in their home. “Frankly, this is cold, your honor,” Sunday said. “A single man wants to evict a family of four to move into a home which he has admitted is for his own financial benefit and gain.”

“There’s nothing I can do about that,” the judge said. “That is what the law allows. So that needs to be taken on with the governor, our mayor or Legislature, because there are people who very likely take advantage of that.”

Four days after the Sundays received their eviction order, Green responded to residents’ complaints and made it harder to claim the exception that Sunday’s landlord had cited. Now, a landlord or family member who claims they need to move into a property must provide a sworn statement saying they’re not accepting money from an aid program to house survivors.

That same day, Sunday said, his family packed the last of their belongings as a process server threatened to call the sheriff if they lingered too long. They put most of their belongings in a storage unit and gave away all of their pets and backyard farm animals — 18 chickens, nine ducks, two dogs and a pair of cats. They have to relocate again this week.

Sunday doesn’t know what to tell his kids about the constant shuffling and when they’ll see their pets again. “I can’t give them any kind of peace,” he said, “without lying to them.”

The power was out before the fires started. Then Hawaiian Electric flipped the switch.

This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat. You can sign up for Civil Beat's newsletter here and support the nonprofit newsroom here.

The power was already out in West Maui at 5 a.m. on Aug. 8 and it could have stayed that way had Hawaiian Electric decided not to re-energize its lines.

Instead, the company rebooted a tripped transmission line so that it could provide electricity to some of its customers in Lahaina despite an ongoing windstorm and repeated warnings of extreme fire danger.

The power came back on around 6 a.m. and within the hour a downed power line near the intersection of Lahainaluna Road and Hoohakuna Street sparked a blaze that may have been the origin of the deadly inferno that ripped through much of Lahaina and killed at least 99 people. Four others are still listed as missing by the Maui Police Department.

The details about Hawaiian Electric’s early morning actions on Aug. 8 were spelled out in newly released written testimony from the company’s president and CEO, Shelee Kimura, who was responding to questions from a congressional oversight committee investigating the fires.

Kimura testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in September.

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U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, chairman of the oversight subcommittee, sent Kimura a series of written questions last month seeking more clarity on the circumstances surrounding the fires. At the time, he said there were “still too many questions surrounding the sequence of events that led to the devastating fires on Maui.”

Kimura responded to Griffith on Oct. 28, but those responses were only made available this week.

Hawaiian Electric officials declined to comment for this story.In her written responses, Kimura said Hawaiian Electric began preparing for high winds on Aug. 7 after the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning that morning for the leeward coasts of all the Hawaiian islands.

The severe weather warnings triggered what she called a “Reclose Blocking Procedure” that the company implemented in 2021 to reduce fire risk by disabling circuits that automatically re-energize tripped wires that have gone offline. Under that protocol, she said, the only time a line can be re-energized is if it’s done manually and after an inspection has found it to be “clear and intact.”

On Aug. 8, Kimura said Hawaiian Electric was following this protocol when it inspected and energized a transmission line at 6 a.m. to restore power to some of its customers in Lahaina.

That same line, she said, tripped offline at 6:39 a.m. — around the same time the fire started — and was never turned back on.

Kimura acknowledged in her testimony that Hawaiian Electric had dismissed best practices used in California to implement a “public safety power shutoff” program in which electricity is cut before severe weather events to limit the risk of fires.

She explained that the company had studied whether a similar program would work in Hawaii but ultimately decided against it due to the differences in the perceived risk posed in the islands.

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“Our planners determined that the risk of catastrophic wildfire was less severe in Hawai’i than California based on our understanding of differences in vegetation, as well as our own experiences with wildfires until that time,” Kimura said.

She noted that Hawaii had no history of catastrophic wildfires when compared to California and that over the past decade 90% of fires in the state had been less than one acre.

Her response did not address a previous wildfire in Lahaina in 2018 that destroyed 21 homes, scorched 2,100 acres and caused an estimated $4.3 million in damages. At that time, community members demanded action from both Maui County and Hawaiian Electric, but apparently little was done to address their concerns.

Kimura said that preemptive power shut offs can be disruptive, and that Hawaiian Electric was worried that cutting electricity to customers could cause other problems affecting health and safety, whether it means turning off air conditioners for the elderly or disrupting traffic signals.

The fact that the power was out in Lahaina and Hawaiian Electric turned it back on has not been a prominent part of the company’s own narrative of the disaster, but could play a significant role in the company’s future, especially as it faces a barrage of lawsuits for its role in sparking the blaze.

Already, the company has tried to distance itself from the disaster and has pointed out the cause of the afternoon fire that swept through Lahaina has not been determined. The company has agreed that one of its power lines sparked the morning fire around 6:30 a.m. The county as well as attorneys for fire victims contend the afternoon fire was a flare-up of the morning fire.

According to Hawaiian Electric, Maui County firefighters had declared the morning fire extinguished beforeleaving the scene. When the second fire erupted in the same area around 3 p.m., the company said that all of its lines in West Maui were already de-energized.

Jim Bickerton, a Honolulu attorney who represents a number of fire victims, said the fact that Hawaiian Electric restored power to Lahaina during a windstorm should not be overlooked.

“It’s a central part of the allegations of negligence and these facts that are coming to light show that they’re more than just mere allegations,” Bickerton said. “It raises a lot of questions and we don’t think Hawaiian Electric has good answers for it.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by grants from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.

Maui police chief: Some fire victims may never be found

This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat. You can sign up for Civil Beat's newsletter here and support the nonprofit newsroom here.

Maui County officials acknowledged for the first time Friday that there could be dozens if not hundreds of people whose remains may never be recovered after perishing in the deadly wildfire that ripped through the historic town of Lahaina.

Maui Police Chief John Pelletier told reporters at a press conference that the number of confirmed fatalities has remained at 115 for days despite the fact that search crews using cadaver dogs to comb through the rubble were expected to have gone through the entire fire area by the end of Friday.

Divers have also been searching the nearshore waters around the disaster zone for much of the past week, but so far have not found any bodies.

Hundreds of people are still unaccounted for.

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Pellitier said the number of confirmed fatalities will likely change significantly over time as forensic analysis is performed and more information is gleaned from the community regarding the people who have been reported missing and unaccounted for.

“We’re doing everything we can to make as much of a recovery as possible,” Pelletier said. “We also know that we may have some commingled recoveries so I’m giving you that number based on what we have and we believe. In some ways, it’s an estimate.”

Pelletier referenced the 9/11 terrorist attack that killed more than 2,700 people in New York City.

To this day, the remains of nearly 1,100 people have yet to be identified, although that work is continuing more than 20 years later.

“It’s entirely possible years from now that we will find something or someone that leads us to believe that we’re recovering new remains,” Pelletier said. “There’s no secrecy or hidden agenda. We’re going as fast as we can, but we’re doing it the right way.”

Maui County has been working with the FBI to develop a comprehensive list of people who are unaccounted for. Over the past two weeks the number has fluctuated, from hundreds to thousands and back down again.

On Thursday, the county released a list of 388 names of people who remained unaccounted for since the Aug. 8 blaze. That list included only those names that could be validated by the FBI.

Steven Merrill, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Honolulu office, said Friday that releasing that list to the public “produced a great deal of information” that has allowed officials to remove 100 names from the list.

He said that while those individuals were found “safe and sound” there are still hundreds more names that must be tracked down. He also made clear that the 388 names were a subset of a larger list that includes partial names and identifying information that still must be validated.

“We care about every single person on that list and we will not rest until we know how each of those people are doing,” Merrill said.

He added that he encourages the community to continue coming forward with more information and he welcomes adding new names to the list of the missing so that everyone can be accounted for. Like Pelletier he urged patience.

In addition to providing an update on the search and recovery efforts, Maui Mayor Richard Bissen announced that the county had hired Darryl Oliviera as the interim director of the Maui Emergency Management Agency.

Oliveira will at least temporarily replace Herman Andaya, who resigned a few days after the Aug. 8 fire.

Andaya has faced widespread criticism for his decision to not activate warning sirens as the fire was spreading down the hill above Lahaina.

Andaya was not on Maui when fires broke out in Upcountry and Lahaina. He has publicly defended the decision not to activate the county’s warning sirens that are used to alert people to the need to evacuate.

Questions have also been raised about whether he was qualified to hold the position as the head of the county’s emergency management agency given he had little to no experience in that area when he was hired.

Oliveira, meanwhile, has a long history in public safety and emergency management operations.

He’s a former Big Island fire chief and top administrator of that county’s civil defense agency. He’s responded to numerous natural disasters, including hurricanes and volcanic eruptions.

Bissen said that experience will be critical for the county moving forward.

“As Maui deals with this unprecedented disaster, our response and recovery efforts will need strong leadership,” Bissen said. “Chief Oliveira’s history of emergency management and community leadership will be an asset for us as we deal with a wildfire disaster and its aftermath.”

Also on Friday, the Healthcare Association of Hawaii said nine people who sustained injuries in the Maui fires were being treated in Oahu hospitals. The family members or next of kin of those patients have been notified, or are being notified, the association said.

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.