Hawaii has been devastated by deadly wildfires.
The death toll has hit 114 with hundreds more people missing.
And Barack Obama’s ties to an unbelievable turf war that cost lives in the Maui fires will leave you red with rage.
Hawaii has suffered from some of the deadliest wildfires in American history.
The area of Lahaina on the island of Maui was razed by fires, and questions are swirling over what happened.
One point of failure was that firemen were delayed in receiving the water they needed for hours by the Commission on Water Resource Management (CWRM).
And it recently surfaced that M. Kaleo Manuel, former deputy director of the CWRM, was a far-left activist who believed in “water equity.”
Obama Foundation may want to take this bio down
Now it’s come to light that Manuel has links to former President Barack Obama.
The New York Post reports the Obama Foundation lists Manuel as it’s 2019 Asia Pacific leaders.
“[P]art of a program by the former President’s non-profit to help participants with coaching and “practical skill building for social change,” the New York Post reported, calling Manuel a “former Obama Foundation leader.”
Manuel previously said, “Native Hawaiians treated water as one of the earthly manifestations of a god. We’ve become used to looking at water as something that we use, and not something that we revere. We can reconnect to that traditional value set.”
M. Kaleo Manuel, the Hawaiian official in charge of water resources is under fire for refusing to divert water from streams and release it to quell the raging Maui fires explains that water must never be used, but revered. pic.twitter.com/fc5lqZGS0Z
— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) August 17, 2023
Glenn Tremble of the West Maui Land Company wrote in a letter, “We anxiously awaited the morning knowing that we could have made more water available to (the fire department) if our request had been immediately approved. We cannot know whether filling our reservoirs at 1:00 p.m. (as opposed to not at all) would have changed the headlines when dawn broke. We know that we need to act faster during an emergency.”
CWRM allegedly delayed in approving the water request in order to consult with farmers.
In light of the incident, Manuel was reassigned to a different department.
The Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) wrote in a statement, “DLNR is re-deploying First Deputy of the Commission on Water Resource Management (CWRM), Kaleo Manuel, to a different DLNR division. The purpose of this deployment is to permit CWRM and the Department to focus on the necessary work to assist the people of Maui recover from the devastation of wildfires. This deployment does not suggest that First Deputy Manuel did anything wrong. DLNR encourages the media and the public to avoid making judgments until all the facts are known.”
As is often the case, government bureaucracy gets in the way of responding to a crisis efficiently.
Manuel being reassigned so quickly suggests that he is either being scapegoated, or the DLNR knows that he was negligent in his decision-making.
Regardless of what’s actually behind that decision, one has to think the Obama Foundation would want to quickly take the Manuel bio here down.
Stay tuned to Blue State Blues for any updates to this ongoing story.
