Rebel News Podcast - August 21, 2023


EZRA LEVANT ｜ Maui firestorm： When all hell broke loose on heaven on earth


Episode Stats


Length

34 minutes

Words per minute

154.77623

Word count

5,274

Sentence count

363

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In the wake of a massive wildfire that has destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses on the island of Maui, a group of citizens set up a relief camp to help the thousands of people displaced by the fire. But is it all a little too much help?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. I am in Maui, Hawaii, the site of a massive wildfire that has taken what's
00:00:06.080 estimated or predicted to be hundreds of lives. The full death toll is not yet known. I'm here to
00:00:11.980 find the truth about Maui. I'm here with Alexa, Lavoie, and Lincoln J. I'd like you to see the
00:00:19.380 story I'm telling today. It's a visual story as much as an audio one. So please get the video
00:00:24.420 version by going to rebelnewsplus.com. It's $8 a month. You get all my daily shows in video form.
00:00:32.180 And frankly, the funds help keep Rebel News strong. We take no government funding, which is why we're
00:00:37.840 allowed to ask politically incorrect questions where no one else does. That's rebelnewsplus.com.
00:00:43.560 All right, here's today's podcast.
00:00:54.420 Tonight, what's the truth about Maui? It's August 21st, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
00:01:09.020 Shame on you, you censorious bug.
00:01:12.280 I'm in Maui, one of the Hawaiian islands. It really is a paradise, heaven on earth. But about a week
00:01:27.360 ago, hell broke loose in the form of, well, hellfire. It was a shocking firestorm. I mean,
00:01:35.020 there's no other way to say it. It consumed everything in its path, houses, businesses,
00:01:41.100 cars, and people. The death toll, locals say, is expected to be half a thousand, which is a
00:01:49.200 staggering number by any count. And given the small size of the island of Maui, it truly is the worst
00:01:55.480 tragedy ever to befall this island. There is a echo, in some ways, of the 9-11 massacre. Of course,
00:02:04.240 that was a deliberate, evil terrorist act. But there is something similar about a massive torched area
00:02:12.800 where bodies have to be painstakingly identified, and people are wondering, where are my loved ones,
00:02:19.180 hoping that they're simply lost rather than consumed in the fire. It is a tremendous tragedy,
00:02:25.680 and it is also a reason why it is difficult for outsiders, including journalists, to film certain
00:02:33.980 things. Just like 9-11, Ground Zero itself was off limits to reporters while they were discovering
00:02:42.120 bodies and digging through the wreckage, so too is it in this part of Maui. For example, at night,
00:02:47.780 at 10 p.m., police have roadblocks in effect, demanding to see proof of residence for anyone passing
00:02:54.800 through. I myself was stopped at one of these when I was coming to Lahaina, which is the town here.
00:03:02.220 I convinced the police officer to let me through because I was bringing with me a satellite dish,
00:03:08.180 one of Elon Musk's Starlink satellite dishes. I picked it up in Canada, and I was bringing it here
00:03:14.580 to Maui because two of our reporters were already on the ground, Lincoln Jay and Alexa Levy. You surely
00:03:20.740 know them. Alexa, our Quebec bureau chief, she and Lincoln had reported at length from the trucker
00:03:26.620 convoy in Ottawa. Alexa covered the wildfires in Quebec. Lincoln went down to Ohio to cover the
00:03:32.900 train derailment and explosion. So these were two of our excellent reporters. However, they got here
00:03:38.340 and they reported back to me that it was very difficult for them to operate. Cell phone service
00:03:43.020 doesn't work here. And of course, when we record video files, we send them over the internet.
00:03:47.660 The internet doesn't work here either. They had to record things here and then drive about an hour
00:03:52.900 away where internet is working to file them. It was very impractical. So I came to Maui with a Starlink
00:04:00.040 satellite dish, not just for them, but for the larger community, because it's the kind of thing where
00:04:06.020 you can give the internet password out and 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 people could use it. So I arrived here late
00:04:12.520 at night. The police let me through because I was carrying one of these satellite dishes.
00:04:17.040 It was very dark. I went straight to sleep. But when I woke up, I came to this park just half a block
00:04:23.220 from where I was staying. Honokawai Park. It's on a beach. It's beautiful. But many of the people behind
00:04:31.100 me were dislocated. Their houses have been burned. They don't have anywhere to go. And so the local
00:04:37.640 citizens have built what they're calling a relief camp. They call it Honokawai Ohana. And those are
00:04:43.960 about the only Hawaiian words I know that means, Ohana means family. And it really is. This is not
00:04:50.600 a government camp. In fact, when the FEMA officials, FEMA stands for Federal Emergency Management Agency,
00:04:57.840 when the FEMA officials came here looking to be all official and take over, they said, yeah,
00:05:02.480 no, thanks. We've got it covered. And we were here long before you arrived. It is all grassroots
00:05:08.940 citizen to citizen helping. And I was truly moved by that. Now, the first thing I noticed is they
00:05:14.980 already had Starlink dishes here. So they thanked me for my offer of them, but didn't need it.
00:05:21.560 They had one that anyone could just come and log into. Like I say, they had another one just for the
00:05:27.260 pharmacy they're operating. They have doctors and they fill prescriptions and they run and get
00:05:32.440 the medications. They have a whole system. They have food. They have clothes. They even have
00:05:38.660 veterinary services because of course, what about your pet if your house has gone up in flames? So
00:05:44.380 we learned what they really needed and what they didn't need. It was my best guess that they needed
00:05:49.120 the Starlink. They didn't. They needed other things. And I was frankly moved. I was touched by
00:05:54.360 the selflessness here. There are no government bureaucrats here. No one is here making money. The
00:05:59.140 opposite. People are spending their own money. And I, you know how Rebel News operates. We like to
00:06:03.720 crowdfund. So I was a little bit overcome with emotion, I suppose. And I said to the lady who runs
00:06:09.340 the place, Amber, I said, what do you need? Send a volunteer with me. We'll go to, well, not the
00:06:15.380 Walmart, but there's a big Target store about an hour away. I said, send your volunteer with me. I'm in
00:06:20.140 for a thousand bucks. And we went shopping and our reporter Lincoln came too. And again, it wasn't
00:06:26.740 the things I thought they would have needed water. And no, no, they got all that. They needed school
00:06:32.220 supplies because they're having a little mini school here. The kids were in school for just one week
00:06:37.380 before it all went up in flames. And we had a unique list of things that I just simply wouldn't have known
00:06:43.080 what to do. And there's a little bit of a lesson in there too. Sometimes philanthropy, we want to choose
00:06:48.640 what we give. Oh, you need this. This is what you need. That's what I thought with the Starlink. I
00:06:53.980 mean, that wasn't a bad idea if I do say so myself. It's just not what they needed. When I actually
00:06:58.220 listened to them, what they needed, they said, well, we need stuff for school kids and we need
00:07:02.900 socks and underwear. And we need, they told me a list of things, including like pens and papers and
00:07:08.980 name tags and stuff. All right. So we, oh, and you know what they also asked for? And I sort of
00:07:13.180 chuckled at first they wanted coffee. And I thought, come on. Well, yeah, come on. I mean,
00:07:19.960 it was the first thing I wanted that day. And you know, it's Hawaii and they, they do love their
00:07:24.680 coffee. Um, so we brought a ton of coffee, not just coffee fresh from Starbucks, but the instant
00:07:30.840 coffee. And again, think about it. That's what people want. I talked to a couple who, uh, were,
00:07:38.340 I met them at the truck where we were all accessing the Starlink in the community. And
00:07:44.360 they, they talked about how devastating it is to lose all high tech communication. Think
00:07:50.720 about it, not just your phone, but your email. And so many things work on the internet, like
00:07:56.620 using a credit card at a store that doesn't work if the little credit card machine doesn't
00:08:01.520 operate. How do you get messages out? It was incredible. The husband and wife I was talking
00:08:06.400 to said that in the, about a week ago, the government sent an airplane around. And I said,
00:08:12.200 Oh, was it towing like a banner with a message behind it? No, it had loudspeakers. I thought
00:08:18.380 that was very unusual to have loudspeakers, but they could overhear, uh, the speakers despite
00:08:24.380 the drone or the plane. So imagine that. And I was thinking about what would happen to the
00:08:29.340 larger society of electricity would go out. It's like an EMP device, an electromagnetic pulse.
00:08:35.080 If it knocked out all electronics, we would be set. We wouldn't know how to operate. These people
00:08:40.920 showed that there is kindness and there is civility in the community. They didn't loot. They didn't
00:08:46.300 riot the opposite. They came together as an Ohana. And we were delighted to be a part of that in a small
00:08:52.860 way. I really enjoyed going shopping. I normally hate shopping, but I did it. And then we set up a
00:08:59.160 crowdfunding page for them on give, send, go. So it's got full transparency. And I feel really good
00:09:05.060 about that because if you, you know, we, I asked our reporters, Lincoln and Alexa, before they came
00:09:10.960 over here, I said, look, tread very carefully, walk very lightly. There are still dead bodies out there.
00:09:17.160 There are holes in hearts and be careful. Do your journalism, do your accountability journalism,
00:09:22.220 but understand you're going into a place with raw emotion. And I said, please make a donation,
00:09:28.200 each of you before you come out here. And I, and what would you do? Well, I just thought, okay,
00:09:32.340 Red Cross, you know, you can't go wrong with Red Cross. So each of our reporters made a hundred
00:09:36.860 dollar donation to the Red Cross, but we've learned that that is absolutely not the best way to give.
00:09:42.420 And wouldn't you agree with me looking at this amazing grassroots little camp behind that that is a
00:09:49.400 much better use. So we set up a website called honokawaierelief.com and it's already raised some
00:09:56.660 dough. I'm feeling really good about that. Of course, we're doing our crowdfunding too for Rebel News.
00:10:02.060 We took economy class airfare to get over here, but we had Lincoln and Alexa and then I came out.
00:10:07.900 We're all staying at the same Airbnb. So our costs really are very, very low. But altogether,
00:10:13.640 between the three of us is probably going to be about $3,000, including the Airbnb. If you think
00:10:18.500 this journalism is useful, please do chip in at the truthaboutmaui.com. I want to show you some
00:10:26.060 of the interviews in journalism that Lincoln and Alexa have done. They're asking questions about
00:10:33.240 how did the fire happen? Why was there no notification? Like even where I'm standing,
00:10:40.160 you can see a tower with a bunch of green discs on it. And you might say, what is that? Is some sort
00:10:47.080 of electrical transformer? No, that is an alarm system, a warning system for these islands in
00:10:54.840 case there's a tidal wave, in case there's another crisis. Those sirens alert people. It's sort of the
00:11:02.400 1970s version of the, you know, when you get an amber alert on your cell phone. By the way,
00:11:08.100 they do that alert on your cell phone also. I don't know if you remember, but not too long ago,
00:11:12.600 they accidentally sent an alert to everyone in Hawaii. I think that there was a missile strike
00:11:18.660 inbound. So they have these emergency systems, but they were not deployed. The sirens never went off.
00:11:26.500 The alarm was never called. Why? One of the excuses I saw was absurd that people would run to the fire.
00:11:33.620 What are people, stupid animals or something like cattle that would be spooked? It was the dumbest
00:11:38.880 excuse I ever heard. But not as dumb as this from the official in charge of water who made decisions
00:11:44.740 about how much water to deploy to fight the fires. Listen to this woke gobbledygook. Take a listen to
00:11:50.960 this. The commission is responsible, per our authorizing statute, to protect and manage all
00:11:57.700 water resources in the state. One water is like taking it and looking at it from a holistic system
00:12:02.680 perspective. And that's not any different than how Hawaiians traditionally manage water. You know,
00:12:08.480 in essence, we treated, native Hawaiians treated water as one of the earthly manifestations of a god and a
00:12:15.200 kuwa kane. And so that reverence for a resource and that reciprocity in relationship was something that
00:12:24.240 was really, really important to our worldview and well-being, right? And living in an island
00:12:29.920 in isolated from other, you know, civilizations. And so I think where it shifted to today, or over time,
00:12:40.400 is that we've become used to looking at water as like something which we use, and not necessarily
00:12:47.040 something that we revere as that thing that gives us life, right? I mean, to me, it's a shift in value
00:12:53.520 set. And, you know, if we can start to really look at how we as humans in an island can reconnect to
00:13:03.840 that traditional value set. So really, my motto is always like, let water connect us and not divide us.
00:13:09.280 Like, we can share it, but it requires true conversations about equity.
00:13:14.800 Yeah. Did wokeism or was it just incompetence or what was it? And how about after the fires,
00:13:22.720 when the governor started talking about buying up all the land that was burned? Hang on.
00:13:28.080 That's a conspiracy, isn't it? That these fires were just to have someone scoop up the land for
00:13:33.120 development? Well, I don't know if it's a conspiracy because here's the governor talking about it.
00:13:37.680 I'm already thinking about ways for the state to acquire that land so that we can put it into
00:13:42.080 workforce housing, to put it back into families, or to make it open spaces in perpetuity as a memorial
00:13:47.920 to people who were lost. We want this to be something that we remember after the pain passes
00:13:55.760 as a magic place. And the Heine will rebuild. The tragedy right now is the loss of life.
00:14:02.000 The buildings can be rebuilt over time. Even the banyan tree may survive.
00:14:06.720 But we don't want this to become a clear space where then, yes, people from overseas just come
00:14:14.480 and decide they're going to take it. The state will take it and preserve it first.
00:14:17.360 Yeah. Now, listen, I'm not here to chase conspiracy theories. The opposite. If there's
00:14:21.280 a conspiracy theory that needs to be debunked, we will do that. But if there are strange questions that
00:14:27.200 are unanswered, we will ask those questions and we'll follow the facts wherever they lead.
00:14:32.240 Uh, interesting is that Joe Biden, after first saying no comment to anything about these fires,
00:14:39.360 has announced that he finally will come to Lahaina on Monday today. Now I'm recording this in advance,
00:14:46.560 so I won't have the information about that, but we will have Lincoln and Alexa on the scene to tell you
00:14:52.400 what is said. I hear a rumor that he might even be speaking in this very area, which is highly
00:14:58.240 inappropriate given it's the least government part of all of Maui. And maybe that's why it's the most
00:15:04.240 successful relief camp. And maybe that's why Joe Biden wants to piggyback on their success.
00:15:10.400 Let me now, uh, do two things. I'm going to show you a little bit of my journey
00:15:19.600 when we went shopping for the crowdfunding. I'm going to show you a little bit of that,
00:15:23.360 just a little, I'm not going to show you that much. It was sort of fun to go with one of the
00:15:26.720 volunteers and go shopping and, and I really felt useful. And then I'm going to leave you with a few
00:15:34.000 interviews that Lincoln and Alexa did because they were here before me and they were talking to people
00:15:39.520 heart to heart about some of the terrible things that happened. Come back after those interviews.
00:15:44.960 And then I have a word about the wildfires that are raging in Canada, including in British Columbia.
00:15:52.080 I'll talk about that after these words from Lincoln and Alexa.
00:16:09.520 And then where are you going to go? I'm going to go to the, uh, office.
00:16:22.080 Okay, so, uh, should we meet you there when we're done with the other ones?
00:16:25.920 Sure.
00:16:26.480 I'm just going to buy it all, right?
00:16:39.520 I'm just going to buy a lot of it, right?
00:16:53.760 Yep. And then we can even,
00:16:56.960 some stuff.
00:16:58.960 I'm just going to buy a lot of it.
00:17:15.040 Go get you some coffee.
00:17:16.400 Get you some coffee.
00:17:22.400 Oh, and then all of these ones.
00:17:47.840 Yeah, those smaller packets would be good actually.
00:18:03.760 The environmental impact is very minimal.
00:18:06.000 I don't know anything about companies that are actually good or not, but you can take these,
00:18:09.280 cut them up and they, you just get them wet like normal hands out, but it's shampoo.
00:18:13.680 It says five in one, so you could probably use it on your body.
00:18:17.840 I think Alexa said bananas or someone said bananas. 1.00
00:18:46.320 Do you know how you do that right?
00:18:47.360 I don't think they hurt.
00:18:53.920 When you're in Hawaii, you got to have dull bananas.
00:19:07.520 They hurt the
00:19:36.260 We'll be right back.
00:20:06.260 We'll be right back.
00:20:36.260 And then all of a sudden, my husband started to yell, oh, we got to get out of here.
00:20:40.760 We got to get out of here.
00:20:42.340 So we just, like, we didn't have time to, we grabbed what we could grab, which wasn't much.
00:20:48.260 And then we got into our car, and then we had our neighbors from upstairs.
00:20:53.320 We were the last two to get out of there.
00:20:56.120 And then when we were trying to come out, the fire just dropped on this tree across the street.
00:21:02.240 With all the traffic, we couldn't get out.
00:21:04.940 So we said, oh, just go back and park the car, and we'll just run, yeah?
00:21:10.720 So my neighbors had already, like, get out of the car and run down the road.
00:21:15.160 And what we did was I said, no, we're not running down because it looks like the fire is coming that way.
00:21:20.420 Let's run this way through our apartments and up to Waine'e and through that village.
00:21:27.760 And that's where I was saved.
00:21:29.880 I went, I don't know how many miles that is, but I ran as far as I can through the coma village.
00:21:35.640 And then the guy carried me, and then after, went back and brought the truck to pick us up.
00:21:41.280 So he saved us, you know.
00:21:43.820 It was very unreal.
00:21:45.420 It was one of those experiences where, like people say, oh, it's like a scene out of a movie.
00:21:51.240 It was, but it was real life, passing by a building that was completely on fire inside
00:21:58.720 and starting to actually burn out from the inside.
00:22:02.300 You know, the smoke billowing through, the, you know, having to duck and turn away from the wind
00:22:08.700 so that we could actually catch a little bit of, like, air to breathe.
00:22:14.080 All right, so at the time we're filming this right now,
00:22:16.400 it's about, just about 48 hours since we started HanukkahWaiRelief.com.
00:22:24.260 And we've just about hit our goal of $25,000.
00:22:29.340 So, Amber, how does this make you feel?
00:22:31.540 We feel so loved, and we feel, we feel the love coming in.
00:22:35.300 And we're really proud of what we've built, and we're really happy that we get to continue
00:22:39.040 building out the infrastructure that we have here to support the community
00:22:42.800 because we're finding new portions of the community coming out and joining us with new needs
00:22:46.720 that we didn't even know we had.
00:22:48.700 So we're just delighted that we get to continue the work out here.
00:22:52.520 What's your message to everybody that's donated?
00:22:55.440 Thank you.
00:22:56.240 Thank you so much for your donations, for embracing our family here, for supporting us.
00:23:00.640 We've been also reading through the messages of prayers and thoughts,
00:23:03.460 and support coming in globally has been, it's been really touching
00:23:08.980 because we are still kind of out of communication.
00:23:12.800 We're really in the work that we're doing.
00:23:14.880 So to take a moment and to read the messages that are coming in along with the donations,
00:23:20.000 just keep our hearts full and really keep us going.
00:23:23.980 Is there anything else you'd like to say to the people watching?
00:23:27.480 Yeah, we're learning that this is going to be a long-term project,
00:23:30.720 and we're not even halfway done yet.
00:23:33.100 But the rebuilding and the support for our community is going to be months, if not years.
00:23:39.520 And we're hoping that at the end of this, we're finally getting permanent solutions in place.
00:23:44.500 And it's not just crisis management, that we're now taking a look at what the deeper needs are
00:23:50.300 of the community and not just addressing the moment.
00:23:54.060 So thank you.
00:23:55.260 Their reasoning is that they would have put on the sirens and then people would move up into the fire, okay?
00:24:03.060 I call bullsh** because we're not stupid, all right?
00:24:07.140 If we would have been warned at 2 in the afternoon,
00:24:09.860 we could have saved everything out of that f***ing apartment instead of just ourselves, all right? 0.69
00:24:14.420 And there wouldn't be all the death and the people jumping into the f***ing ocean on fire, all right?
00:24:19.580 And the death toll is f***ing bullsh**.
00:24:21.760 What is it, up to 110?
00:24:22.720 I have friends who they saw more than 300 people in the f***ing water, okay?
00:24:29.220 So they're not counting the bodies that sunk, all right?
00:24:32.400 You're not surprised that the sirens didn't go up?
00:24:37.340 Definitely surprised.
00:24:39.400 I mean, even, you know, on your phones, like, shouldn't there be, like, emergency alerts that come through?
00:24:45.340 And, like, even if you don't have service, the satellites can directly beam in and, you know, give you an update.
00:24:51.500 Like, hey, here's the fire.
00:24:52.760 But nothing happened, you know?
00:24:55.300 So all of us as a community were, you know, confused.
00:24:58.900 And it would have been awesome if we could even have some sort of help saying,
00:25:02.980 hey, like, there's a f***ing emergency right now. 0.67
00:25:05.720 Like, get out, you know?
00:25:07.860 Like, get out of there.
00:25:09.180 Like, it's not just like, oh, shoot, there's a fire, you know?
00:25:12.540 There's fires everywhere in the world.
00:25:14.160 But this is, like, when it's happening like this, it's like, frick, sound the alarms, get out of there, better safe than sorry.
00:25:23.080 So, yeah, there are no alarms, there are no alerts.
00:25:25.780 And checked out the area, checking what was, it was easier to describe what was still standing rather than saying what was down
00:25:34.040 because everything, for the most part, was pretty much gone and wiped out, disappeared, and just left me in shock.
00:25:41.520 And it, I'm a combat vet and I, like, never seen anything like this.
00:25:46.620 It looked like a nuclear holocaust. 0.88
00:25:48.160 I couldn't believe it.
00:25:49.020 We saw fire trucks that were abandoned where you could see that they were overcome by the flames and the smoke and they had to leave.
00:25:59.360 The whole time I thought about what can I do, you know?
00:26:03.560 And God told me, since you can't help these people, they're dead, go help the people that are still living.
00:26:08.660 So, I came back to this area and we started with four cases of water, just trying to make sure everybody had drinking water to drink.
00:26:19.980 We heard that the water was contaminated.
00:26:22.200 We ended up having more fires and we ended up having to evacuate this area.
00:26:29.760 But, you know, only then after that, when we had the fire out here in Kaanapali.
00:26:33.700 We could see the black smoke from a distance and it was really heavy, thick black smoke.
00:26:39.640 We thought we were going to be okay, so we stayed for a little bit, but there was a lot of cars trying to get out of our neighborhood.
00:26:46.100 My daughter-in-law was in the midst of it, so she evacuated, came running with her kids, my grandkids, to us for safety.
00:26:53.820 But by the time she came to us, it looked like it was more, you know, coming towards our direction.
00:26:58.480 So, she went further north, but it was just a lot of chaos with the cars on the roads.
00:27:04.340 Nobody, there was no direction from anyone, you know, nobody was out there, no help, no police, no firemen, nothing was out there to help direct traffic or to let anybody know it's time to evacuate.
00:27:18.040 So, we all went back in the house, you know, had dinner.
00:27:21.380 It wasn't until almost 8, I want to say, 7.30, 8 o'clock was when we heard the loudspeakers telling us to evacuate.
00:27:35.920 So, in our area where we lived, that was Waiikuli Road on that street, that area.
00:27:40.340 That's when we heard the loudspeakers for us to evacuate was between 7.45, 8 o'clock.
00:27:45.720 So, by that point, then we loaded up our bags and we got in the vehicles and we drove to the Civic Center.
00:27:52.120 By 8.30, we were told to evacuate there.
00:27:56.060 And we went from there to Times over here on this Times store.
00:28:00.600 And then we stayed there, got there about 10 o'clock and we've just been there.
00:28:06.140 We're there for, till the next morning.
00:28:08.780 What does your situation look like?
00:28:12.060 Did you lose your home or can you just talk to us a little bit about that?
00:28:16.220 Yeah, so, the area that we're in is a place called Waiikuli in Lahaina.
00:28:23.660 And we were, I guess, one of the fortunate ones to have our house still standing,
00:28:30.840 one of the three houses that are still standing on our corner.
00:28:33.600 Everything else around us kind of is gone.
00:28:36.100 And that is very unfortunate.
00:28:38.520 But we still have no access to it.
00:28:40.620 So, they barricaded where we can't go in because they have to still clear it out.
00:28:43.480 You know, there's a lot of fumes and toxic in the air.
00:28:46.640 So, we're still here, one of the Dispace families.
00:28:50.100 We were able to have minutes, enough time for us to grab, you know, our papers and our IDs
00:28:57.700 and a couple pair of clothing and make it out before we were evacuated,
00:29:01.900 before we had to leave that area.
00:29:06.100 Great journalism by Lincoln and Alexa.
00:29:16.860 Now, we decided to come out here to Maui about a week ago,
00:29:20.520 and it took us a couple days to put those plans into effect.
00:29:23.320 And we knew there were wildfires in Canada because there always are.
00:29:27.920 There's wildfire season.
00:29:29.720 It comes every year.
00:29:31.040 However, this year, it seemed to be worse than before.
00:29:34.720 And as Danielle Smith has noted, the vast majority of those fires are human-caused,
00:29:39.900 either campfires getting out of control or arson.
00:29:43.600 Here's Danielle Smith answering that question when it was put by a climate change activist 0.99
00:29:48.560 posing as a reporter.
00:29:49.920 Take a look at that.
00:29:51.040 We are having this discussion, of course, at a time when there are critical conversations
00:29:54.720 around the world on climate change.
00:29:57.420 Much of the country, including your province, has been ravaged by wildfires this season.
00:30:01.020 Do you believe there is a connection to climate change?
00:30:04.580 Well, look, everybody is on target on 2050.
00:30:07.480 That was decided a couple of years ago at COP26.
00:30:10.660 And so all of the industrialized provinces are moving in that direction for exactly that reason.
00:30:14.100 Everybody knows that we need to reduce emissions.
00:30:16.200 But I'm also watching that China is a billion-plus population.
00:30:22.060 They don't have a target until 2060.
00:30:24.160 India, as I understand it, doesn't have a target until 2070.
00:30:27.500 But in terms of a link, Premier, do you believe that climate change and the unprecedented wildfires
00:30:31.980 we've been seeing this summer are at all related?
00:30:34.520 All I know is in my province, we had 650 fires and 500 of them were human-caused.
00:30:39.640 So we have to make sure that when people know that when it's dry out there and we get into
00:30:43.520 forest fire season, that they're being a lot more careful.
00:30:45.840 Because any time you end up with an ignition that happens, it can have devastating consequences.
00:30:50.600 And so that's what I would hope that we can educate the public on that front as well.
00:30:54.720 Well, whether or not the fires are started by lightning, which is how it always happened
00:30:59.520 historically, pre-historically, or started by accident, a campfire getting out of control,
00:31:05.020 or started by eco-terrorists committing arson to generate the narrative of climate change
00:31:10.740 is boiling, global boiling.
00:31:12.780 I don't know.
00:31:13.940 But the fact is, a fire is a fire.
00:31:16.860 And in British Columbia in particular, it has consumed a tremendous amount of land.
00:31:21.520 The entire province has been declared a state of emergency by the Premier.
00:31:26.000 By the way, that didn't stop Justin Trudeau and Sophie Trudeau from partying in Tofino.
00:31:30.940 I thought they were split up.
00:31:32.000 I don't understand how they're still vacationing in luxury.
00:31:35.880 But that was more important for them than attending to the fires in that province.
00:31:40.800 People have said, Ezra, why are you in Maui covering the fires and not in BC covering the
00:31:45.760 fires?
00:31:46.220 I guess there's three answers.
00:31:47.900 The first is we came to Maui because of the shocking death toll.
00:31:51.280 We don't know what the final figures will be, but it will not surprise me if it's around
00:31:55.800 500 in the end.
00:31:56.940 That's one of the local estimates I've heard.
00:31:59.200 And there were so many strange questions like the ones I put earlier.
00:32:02.380 So we came here because it didn't feel like the journalism was right.
00:32:05.120 The second reason we came here is because it happened first and we moved first and it
00:32:11.200 took us a few days to get into action.
00:32:13.760 And the third reason I would say is that we are very much interested in the fires at home.
00:32:19.020 Thank God they haven't had the same toll in human life as it has here in Maui.
00:32:24.420 You might remember about seven years ago, Rebel News actually had a major crowdfunding campaign,
00:32:30.460 our largest one to date, when Fort McMurray was consumed in wildfires.
00:32:34.260 We raised six figures for the Fort McMurray relief, and it was one of the most important
00:32:40.760 stories and battles we ever fought.
00:32:43.540 I'm still very proud of that to this day.
00:32:46.300 It's hard to do journalism when a fire is actually raging.
00:32:51.180 We didn't come to Maui until the fires were out.
00:32:54.820 And as I said, it's still difficult to get into Lahaina.
00:32:57.680 I had to sort of sweet talk my way through by telling the cop I was bringing the satellite dish.
00:33:02.000 By the way, in the end, we did set the satellite dish up where we were staying and we gave the
00:33:06.720 login credentials to the neighbors in the area.
00:33:10.880 So we will certainly cover the wildfires in British Columbia, but we're not going to go into the fire
00:33:16.740 as they burn.
00:33:18.180 Listen, these fires are terrible, and they're terrible whether they're natural or whether
00:33:23.440 they're arson.
00:33:24.380 If they are arson, especially if they're planned eco-terrorist arsons, I think we have to take
00:33:30.040 it seriously, much more seriously than the global warming regime media will.
00:33:34.220 But for now, from here at the Honokawaii, ohana civil relief camp, which is so impressive
00:33:55.540 and something we can learn from, to you at home, on behalf of rebels everywhere covering
00:34:00.460 stories around the world, goodnight, and keep fighting for freedom.