TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa nonprofit Project DYNAMO said they were among the first to respond to help rescue Americans from the fires on Maui, but they claim more lives could have been saved if government aid had responded faster.
The local government first drew criticism for the lack of evacuation prior to the fires spreading on Aug. 8, killing more than a hundred people, with about 850 others still missing as of Monday, Aug. 21.
“Walking around the Lahaina looks like a cross between ground zero on 911 and like Hiroshima and Nagasaki after we drop Atom bombs,” described Bryan Stern, Founder & CEO of Project DYNAMO.
Stern just got back to Tampa from almost two weeks in Maui.
“Dynamo exists to work where the government isn't. That's kind of our charter,” he said.
The nonprofit originally went to test out its capabilities responding from Tampa to an island in the Pacific Ocean, ahead of any possible rescue needs in Taiwan.
The team of volunteers arrived within 20 hours of the fire starting in Lahaina, chartering four helicopters from a tourist company AirMaui to look for missing people.
“Once the fire went out, people would register on our website, and then we would go to those addresses,” Stern explained. “We had an over 80% fail if the house was even there… closer to 90% when we hit a house… it would be gone.”
Stern said it was “demoralizing,” but what was most upsetting was the lack of help he saw.
“We didn't see any military aircraft flying. Our whole time there, we didn't really see a Black Hawk or a Chinook bring in things or people or even just flying around,” Stern said.
According to the Department of Defense (DoD), the day after the fires started, the National Guard dropped more than 100,000 gallons of water within five hours.
President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration the next day on Aug. 10.
That day, the DoD said they assigned 134 National Guard troops and two Chinook helicopters to respond and search and recovery efforts.
“Do you think that more people would have lived if response was quicker?” ABC Action News asked Stern.
“Just logic tells me that's the case, right?” he replied.
He said in the military, they call it the Golden Hour -- the short window you have to get a soldier out alive in a medevac situation.
On Monday, Aug. 21, FEMA said more than a thousand federal personnel are on the ground in Maui, including 450 search and rescue teams with 40 cadaver dogs.
Stern said we’re not hearing numbers of people found because remains are now ash, blown around in the wind.
“A family had registered on our website. We went to go check out the house of their loved one. And all we always saw was like literally a slab just like just a blank slab,” he recalled. “The house was mostly made out of wood. It burned all the way to the ground.”
“Sure enough, where these series of homes were, there was kind of like… a hill kind of a thing, and against the side of the hill is a huge mound of ash… in there is the living room and the people,” Stern exclaimed.
He concluded that the government needs to assess its response and make changes for any future disasters.
“If Dynamo, as a donor-funded NGO on a shoestring budget, was able to get four special operations guys on the ground in the air in helicopters pulling people out of fire… we were able to do it, so it definitely can be done,” Stern said.
We reached out to the Biden administration for comment but did not receive an immediate response Monday.
To learn more about Project DYNAMO or to donate to relief efforts, visit their website.
