"Face the Nation," August 13, 2023

Interview

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Well, you know, we walked through the streets of Lahaina yesterday.

And I can tell you it was absolutely heartbreaking. It was shocking, surreal. We have heard all these words, but to actually walk those streets, and to still see fires smoldering in the distance, to see cars literally melted into puddles that have hardened over on the road, X's on buildings and cars to say that it has been searched for signs of casualties or even life.

We are not -- we are not at a point where we can say a time frame in terms of when people would be allowed back into the area. But what I can tell is, is just I feel the anger and the angst, that people want to go home. Everyone wants to go home. There are so many of our friends and family that never left.

And that's what we have to remember. We are trying to respectfully make sure that every person unaccounted for right now, we are praying for their safety, that they're in shelters. But we know that too many are in buildings.

Dr. Criswell was talking about the cadaver dogs that have been brought on site that are going to make the difference. Yesterday, when we were touring there, we met the dogs. We met the handlers. We were talking about the gridding system. And one of my aides mentioned, because we heard the dogs barking loudly -- and she said, when she turned to look at them, they were sitting in front of a building and barking.

And, sadly, we know exactly what that means when a cadaver dog sits and barks towards a point. So, every moment, every day right now, we have front-liners who are doing so much to bring all of our family and loved ones home.

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Well, you know, everybody who's ever lived in Hawaii knows the warning sirens. It goes off once a month, at the beginning of the month, at 12:00 noon, and it blares.

And, if it doesn't, it gets fixed, because that is our first line of defense. Unfortunately, in this situation, sadly, tragically, in this situation, those sirens likely did not go off. The warning signals that were on cell phones, we had no cell coverage or electricity in some of these areas.

And the reality is, with those warning signs, it tells all of us to turn on the television or look at our phones or turn on the radio. The reality is, with how fast this burn was -- and you could see it in the videos that survivors were showing me. You could see it in the wreckage.

If you turned on your phone, you turned on a radio, if you even could -- remember, things were out at that particular point -- you would not know what the crisis was. You might think it's a tsunami, by the way, which is our first instinct.

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You would run towards land, which, in this case, would be towards fire.

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Absolutely.

We were never expecting this disaster and tragedy. No one ever does. But you heard it from my constituents that have been on air. This is a national crisis. This is a national problem. I cannot tell you how many individuals we have talked to, we have met. They're not from Hawaii, but they have been severely impacted.

We know, at the end of the day, loss of life will take place not just for Hawaii residents, but for individuals from across the country that were in this area. This is a national disaster we are facing.

And one thing we have to remember too was, this is rural America. Rural America is getting hit by these types of climate change chaoses every single day, disaster. Rural America, which is what Hawaii is, faces the crisis of also being able to get those first responders and support as fast as they need to, to be able to respond in these situations.

So we have to make sure FEMA has the tools and the resources to be able to execute support back home at Hawaii. But, quite frankly, this is going to be happening across the country. And they need the money to be able to respond to wherever disaster strikes.

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Thank you.

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