Maui County officials have taken legal action against major cellular carriers, alleging negligence in failing to inform emergency responders about widespread cellphone outages during last summer's deadly Maui wildfires. The lawsuit claims that if emergency responders had been aware of the outages, alternative methods would have been used to warn the public about the disaster.
According to the lawsuit, alerts sent by the county to cellphones warning residents to evacuate were never received due to the cellphone outages. Additionally, Maui officials failed to activate sirens that could have alerted the entire population about the approaching flames, raising questions about the effectiveness of the emergency warning system.
