As it is looking right now, it seems that a major red flag is that the the Maui Emergency Management Agency’s chief has no experience in emergency management. This may be a case of the top official being in over his head. Herman Andaya was hired in 2017. His background is political science and law. He has no formal education in disaster preparedness or response. When he was hired, he had never held a full-time job in emergency management.

It looks like he’s a guy who got the job because of political connections, not on merit. Andaya was chief of staff to former mayor Alan Arakawa. Andaya said that while he was chief of staff, he assisted during emergency operations and participated in online FEMA training and workshops. The kicker is that Andaya was hired over 40 other applicants for the job.

CBS News has learned Maui’s emergency operations chief had no background in disaster response. It’s his department that is responsible for setting off warning sirens, which rang silent during the fires. #maui #wildfires #Lahaina #MauiFire

— Norah O'Donnell 🇺🇸 (@NorahODonnell) August 16, 2023

The question is, how did someone with no real experience in emergency management land the job over 40 other people? The news report when Andaya was hired said that the applicants who met minimum qualifications sat for a three-hour written examination.

Andaya’s executive experience includes having served as the deputy director of the Department of Housing and Human Concerns, assistant administrator of the housing division and the Mayor’s Chief of Staff. In his capacity as the Mayor’s Chief of Staff his responsibilities included oversight over the Office of Economic Development, Budget Office, Community Development Block Grant office, communications office, executive assistants and clerical staff.

The Emergency Management administrator position is a non-political appointment and was filled through the civil service process. The Department of Personnel Services oversaw the recruitment process which is governed by the State of Hawaii civil service laws. County officials note that Mayor Alan Arakawa “was neither part of the recruitment nor selection process for this position.”

It may be a non-political appointment but it sure looks like politics played a role here. It’s especially true when you look at a “list of eligibles” that was created. That list was created based on the examination score. A selection committee included the Maui Police Department Chief, the Maui Fire Department Chief, the Administrator of the Kauai Emergency Management Agency, and the Administrator of the Hawaii State Emergency Management Agency. At the time, the selection committee touted Andaya’s qualifications.

“Herman’s combined proven leadership abilities, executive level experience, and impressive knowledge of emergency management, particularly in the unique issues and challenges facing Maui County and the State of Hawaii, make him an excellent fit for the position,” noted Ushio.

“Herman is familiar with government processes, especially an intimate familiarity with County Government,” Fire Chief Jeff Murray commented. “What impressed me was his institutional knowledge of the various emergency incidents on Maui since 2003 because of his involvement in the emergency operations center at civil defense when it was activated.”

Andaya had the authority to use the siren warning system to alert the people on Maui but Andaya decided to not use the sirens. This was a tragic mistake, as it turned out. Many residents who survived report that they didn’t know about the wildfires until they saw and smelled smoke. He justified this decision by claiming that the sirens are “mainly used for tsunamis.” He said that is why the sirens are mostly located on the coast. Yikes.

On the state’s website, it states that the siren system can be used for both natural and human-caused events. These events may include “tsunamis, hurricanes, dam breaches, flooding, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, terrorist threats, hazardous material incidents, and more.”

Are you sitting down? Andaya wasn’t on the island when the wildfires started, which can happen, but it is reported that he hasn’t made any appearances at press conferences since the disaster occurred. How is that possible?

David Hafner, a retired telecommunications planner for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, was asked whether Andaya’s inexperience affected the agency’s performance. He called it a “good ol’ boy network,” and said it cost lives this time. He said experience in the field is essential and without it, grave mistakes are made.

Andaya was hired when Hawaii’s counties took on increased responsibility for disaster response. State emergency management officials were the designated authority for emergency response but an update to the law in 2014 put counties in charge.

Asked about Andaya’s LinkedIn resume, Colin Moore, a political scientist at the University of Hawaii, said he was shocked by the emergency administrator’s lack of relevant experience. He said the public is owed an explanation.

“It’s a legitimate question to ask why the person leading the county emergency services agency has no clear background in fire, police, public health, the usual emergency services backgrounds,” he said.

“Having that on-the-ground experience, you develop the instincts and the connections to be able to perform a job like this. And if you just have general government experience, there is just no opportunity to have that kind of on-the-ground knowledge that often is really useful in a crisis.”

Again, yikes.

Andaya is 52-years-old. He’s not a young kid who didn’t know he was out of his league. He must have thought he was qualified for the job, or worse, entitled to the job because of his political experience and connections. The former mayor appointed him acting administrator of MEMA in 2017. He became permanent at the end of the year. Why go through the farce of the hiring process if he was going to be appointed to the job?

In contrast, Honolulu’s emergency management director, Hiro Toiya, has technical training in emergency response, worked for years as a preparedness planner for the Hawaii health department and rose up the ranks of Honolulu’s Department of Emergency Management. He worked there for more than seven years before becoming the director.

So, how did Andaya stand out in a pool of 40 job applicants? Andaya said that Maui doesn’t have a lot of emergency management professionals in the first place. He went on to say he took the exam and his score placed him as a finalist.

“You would have to question the civil service process if you can believe that politics was involved,” he said. “This is something that my predecessors have to go through as well.”

Before Andaya was hired, there were concerns in Maui’s political scene that the county was considering someone who wasn’t qualified.

Why go there? Why is he insisting that politics isn’t involved in the civil service process? Politics figures into civil service all across the country. C’mon. A good ol’ boys network isn’t unique to Hawaii. It’s everywhere. Lots of jobs work out to be about who you know, not necessarily based on merit. This job looks to be one of the former.

Maybe the warning sirens would not have helped. That is the opinion of some people, including the spokesman for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.

Adam Weintraub, a spokesman for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, said in an interview on Monday that he’s not certain sirens would’ve made a difference.

“This thing was big enough and hot enough to make its own weather, but I’m not sure that, with a wall of flames moving at 40 or 50 miles an hour that sounding a siren would’ve provided the level of advance warning that I think people think,” Weintraub said.

“We will be looking at as much data as we can get our hands on to figure out how this happened and what we could’ve done that would have improved our response and made people safe. Wildfires are going to be a bigger part of the threat picture here in Hawaii in the future.”

It seems to me that the warning sirens couldn’t have hurt and likely could have alerted people who weren’t aware of the situation and didn’t have a cell phone for the alert to come that way. Out of an abundance of caution, use everything at your disposal, I say.

There is time for examining what happened. Disasters usually boil down to poor decision-making and judgement. There is often some incompetence mixed in, too. This looks like another tragic example. Experience matters, especially in emergency management with so many lives on the line.