Gene Johnson – The Virginian-Pilot https://www.pilotonline.com The Virginian-Pilot: Your source for Virginia breaking news, sports, business, entertainment, weather and traffic Sat, 08 Jun 2024 15:36:15 +0000 en-US hourly 30 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 https://www.pilotonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/POfavicon.png?w=32 Gene Johnson – The Virginian-Pilot https://www.pilotonline.com 32 32 219665222 Former astronaut William Anders, who took iconic Earthrise photo, killed in Washington plane crash https://www.pilotonline.com/2024/06/07/former-astronaut-william-anders-who-took-iconic-earthrise-photo-killed-in-washington-plane-crash/ Fri, 07 Jun 2024 22:16:17 +0000 https://www.pilotonline.com/?p=7200629&preview=true&preview_id=7200629 SEATTLE (AP) — William Anders, the former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic “Earthrise” photo showing the planet as a shadowed blue marble from space in 1968, was killed Friday when the plane he was piloting alone plummeted into the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90.

His son, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Greg Anders, confirmed the death to The Associated Press.

“The family is devastated,” he said. “He was a great pilot and we will miss him terribly.”

William Anders, a retired major general, has said the photo was his most significant contribution to the space program along with making sure the Apollo 8 command module and service module worked.

The photograph, the first color image of Earth from space, is one of the most important photos in modern history for the way it changed how humans viewed the planet. The photo is credited with sparking the global environmental movement for showing how delicate and isolated Earth appeared from space.

NASA Administrator and former Sen. Bill Nelson said Anders embodied the lessons and the purpose of exploration.

“He traveled to the threshold of the Moon and helped all of us see something else: ourselves,” Nelson wrote on the social platform X.

Anders snapped the photo during the crew’s fourth orbit of the moon, frantically switching from black-and-white to color film.

“Oh my God, look at that picture over there!” Anders said. “There’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!”

FILE – This Dec. 24, 1968, file photo made available by NASA shows the Earth behind the surface of the moon during the Apollo 8 mission. Retired Maj. Gen. William Anders, the former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic “Earthrise” photo showing the planet as a shadowed blue marble from space in 1968, was killed Friday, June 7, 2024, when the plane he was piloting alone plummeted into the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90. (William Anders/NASA via AP, File)

The Apollo 8 mission in December 1968 was the first human spaceflight to leave low-Earth orbit and travel to the moon and back. It was NASA’s boldest and perhaps most dangerous voyage yet and one that set the stage for the Apollo moon landing seven months later.

“Bill Anders forever changed our perspective of our planet and ourselves with his famous Earthrise photo on Apollo 8,” Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, who is also a retired NASA astronaut, wrote on X. “He inspired me and generations of astronauts and explorers. My thoughts are with his family and friends.”

A report came in around 11:40 a.m. that an older-model plane crashed into the water and sank near the north end of Jones Island, San Juan County Sheriff Eric Peter said. Greg Anders confirmed to KING-TV that his father’s body was recovered Friday afternoon.

Only the pilot was on board the Beech A45 airplane at the time, according to the Federal Aviation Association.

The National Transportation Safety Board and FAA are investigating the crash.

William Anders said in an 1997 NASA oral history interview that he didn’t think the Apollo 8 mission was risk-free but there were important national, patriotic and exploration reasons for going ahead. He estimated there was about a one in three chance that the crew wouldn’t make it back and the same chance the mission would be a success and the same chance that the mission wouldn’t start to begin with. He said he suspected Christopher Columbus sailed with worse odds.

He recounted how Earth looked fragile and seemingly physically insignificant, yet was home.

“We’d been going backwards and upside down, didn’t really see the Earth or the Sun, and when we rolled around and came around and saw the first Earthrise,” he said. “That certainly was, by far, the most impressive thing. To see this very delicate, colorful orb which to me looked like a Christmas tree ornament coming up over this very stark, ugly lunar landscape really contrasted.”

Anders said in retrospect he wished he had taken more photos but mission Commander Frank Borman was concerned about whether everyone was rested and forced Anders and Command Module Pilot James A. Lovell, Jr. to sleep, “which probably made sense.”

Chip Fletcher, a University of Hawaii professor who has conducted extensive research on coastal erosion and climate change, recalls seeing the photo as a child.

“It just opened up my brain to realize that we are alone but we are together,” he said, adding that it still influences him today.

“It’s one of those images that never leaves my mind,” he said. “And I think that’s true of many, many people in many professions.”

Anders served as backup crew for Apollo 11 and for Gemini XI in 1966, but the Apollo 8 mission was the only time he flew to space.

Anders was born on October 17, 1933, in Hong Kong. At the time, his father was a Navy lieutenant aboard the USS Panay, which was a U.S. gunboat in China’s Yangtze River.

Anders and his wife, Valerie, founded the Heritage Flight Museum in Washington state in 1996. It is now based at a regional airport in Burlington, and features 15 aircrafts, several antique military vehicles, a library and many artifacts donated by veterans, according to the museum’s website. Two of his sons helped him run it.

The couple moved to Orcas Island, in the San Juan archipelago, in 1993, and kept a second home in their hometown of San Diego, according to a biography on the museum’s website. They had six children and 13 grandchildren. Their current Washington home was in Anacortes.

Anders graduated from the Naval Academy in 1955 and served as a fighter pilot in the Air Force.

He later served on the Atomic Energy Commission, as the U.S. chairman of the joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. technology exchange program for nuclear fission and fusion power, and as ambassador to Norway. He later worked for General Electric and General Dynamics, according to his NASA biography.

___

McAvoy reported from Honolulu. Associated Press writer Lisa Baumann contributed to this report.

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7200629 2024-06-07T18:16:17+00:00 2024-06-08T11:36:15+00:00
Police track down escaped Idaho prison gang member and accomplice, say pair may have killed 2 on run https://www.pilotonline.com/2024/03/21/police-track-down-escaped-idaho-prison-gang-member-and-accomplice-say-pair-may-have-killed-2-on-run/ Thu, 21 Mar 2024 05:03:21 +0000 https://www.pilotonline.com/?p=6584402&preview=true&preview_id=6584402 By GENE JOHNSON and MARK THIESSEN (Associated Press)

Police on Thursday arrested two white supremacist gang members — an Idaho prison inmate and the accomplice who helped him escape — following an attack on corrections officers at a Boise hospital, and investigators are looking into whether they killed two people while on the run.

Skylar Meade, the escaped inmate, and Nicholas Umphenour, the man who police say shot two Idaho corrections officers early Wednesday to break Meade out of custody, were arrested after a brief car chase Thursday afternoon in Twin Falls, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) from the hospital.

Authorities said during a news conference Thursday that they were investigating two homicides, in Clearwater County and Nez Perce County, which borders Washington state. Both victims were men. Police found shackles at the scene of one of the killings and “that’s one of the ways we tied them together,” Idaho State Police Lt. Colonel Sheldon Kelley said.

The Clearwater County Sheriff’s Office said via Facebook that it received a request for a welfare check Wednesday evening and deputies found a man who had died. The suspects were several hours out of the county when the call came in, according to the office. No further details were released.

Meade, 31, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2017 for shooting at a sheriff’s sergeant during a high-speed chase. Umphenour was released from the same prison — the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Kuna, south of Boise — in January. The two had at times been housed together, were both members of the Aryan Knights prison gang, and had mutual friends in and out of prison, officials said.

No shots were fired during the arrest, police said.

The attack on the Idaho Department of Correction officers came just after 2 a.m. Wednesday in the ambulance bay of Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center, as they were preparing to return Meade to the prison. He had been brought to the hospital earlier in the night because he injured himself, officials said.

After the ambush, one officer shot by Umphenour was in critical but stable condition, police said, while the second wounded officer had serious but non-life-threatening injuries. A third corrections officer also sustained non-life-threatening injuries when a responding police officer — mistakenly believing the shooter was still in the emergency room and seeing an armed person near the entrance — opened fire.

Correction Director Josh Tewalt said Thursday one guard had been released from the hospital, and the other two are stable and improving.

The department is reviewing its policies and practices in light of the escape, he said.

“We’re channeling every resource we have to trying to understand exactly how they went about planning it,” Tewalt said.

The Aryan Knights is a gang that formed in the mid-1990s in Idaho’s prison system to organize criminal activity for a select group of white people in custody as well as outside prison walls, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in the district of Idaho.

In 2021, Harlan Hale, described as a leader in the group, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a plot to traffic drugs behind bars and use violence to collect unpaid debts. In a court document, federal prosecutors described the Aryan Knights as a “scourge” within the state’s prison system.

“The hate-fueled gang engages in many types of criminal activity and casts shadows of intimidation, addiction, and violence over prison life,” prosecutors wrote.

In 2022, the Anti-Defamation League counted 75 different white supremacist prison gangs in federal or local facilities in at least 38 states. The ADL said two of the largest such groups, the Aryan Circle and Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, had at least 1,500 members.

Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow for the ADL’s Center on Extremism, estimates that the Aryan Knights has approximately 150 members behind bars and roughly 100 more on the streets. He said the group operates in other states, including Washington and Oregon.

“With all white supremacist prison gangs, the ideology takes a backseat to the organized crime. That’s just a given,” he said. “They use that as a sort of a glue to help keep them together and help keep them loyal to the gang.”

Pitcavage said white supremacist prison gangs are a very different phenomenon from neo-Nazi groups like Aryan Nations, which had a compound in north Idaho at its peak in the 1980s and 1990s.

Recently, Meade had been held in a type of solitary confinement called administrative segregation because officials deemed him a severe security risk, Tewalt said.

Meade had been escorted in the ambulance and at the hospital by a uniformed, unarmed officer wearing a ballistic vest, tailed by two armed officers, Correction officials said.

Security for transporting Meade to the hospital from prison was enhanced because of his violent history, but the department will review their overall policies for transporting inmates to hospitals, Tewalt said.

The attack came amid a wave of gun violence at hospitals and medical centers, which have struggled to adapt to the rise of threats.

___

Johnson reported from Seattle and Thiessen from Anchorage, Alaska. Associated Press writer Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington; Associated Press researcher Rhonda Schafner in New York; and Michael Kunzelman in Silver Spring, Maryland, contributed to this report.

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6584402 2024-03-21T01:03:21+00:00 2024-03-24T20:13:55+00:00
Oregon teen saves 9-month-old baby after she saw its 3 family members get electrocuted https://www.pilotonline.com/2024/01/18/a-baby-lived-because-an-oregon-teen-couldnt-stand-by-after-she-saw-3-people-get-electrocuted/ Fri, 19 Jan 2024 02:21:53 +0000 https://www.pilotonline.com/?p=6350079&preview=true&preview_id=6350079 PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Majiah Washington noticed a flash outside her home this week in Portland, where a dangerous storm had coated the city with ice. Opening her blinds, she saw a red SUV with a downed power line on it and a couple who had been putting their baby in the car.

The woman screamed to her boyfriend to get the baby to safety, and he grabbed the child and began to scramble up the driveway on concrete so slick it was almost impossible to walk. But before he made it halfway, he slid backward and his foot touched the live wire — “a little fire, then smoke,” Washington said.

The mother, six months pregnant, tried to reach the baby, but she too slipped and was electrocuted. So was her 15-year-old brother, when he came out to help.

Washington, 18, was on the phone with a dispatcher when she saw the baby, lying on top of his father, move his head — the 9-month-old was alive. Having just seen three people shocked to death, she decided to try to save the boy.

She kept a low crouch to avoid sliding into the wire as she approached, she said at a news conference Thursday, a day after the deaths. As she grabbed the baby she touched the father’s body, but she wasn’t shocked, she said.

“I was concerned about the baby,” said Washington, who recognized the woman as her neighbor’s daughter. “Nobody was with the baby.”

Portland Fire and Rescue spokesman Rick Graves praised Washington for her heroism but confessed he didn’t understand how she and the baby weren’t also electrocuted. The baby was examined at a hospital and is fine, authorities have said.

“We do have fortunately with us a toddler that is going to be able to thrive and do what they possibly can as they move forward,” Graves said. “And they are here, in part, because of the heroic acts of a member of our community.”

The snow, freezing rain, ice and frigid temperatures that hammered the Pacific Northwest in the past week have now been blamed for at least 10 deaths in Oregon, from hypothermia and falling trees or utility poles, along with five from hypothermia in the Seattle area.

Oregon’s governor declared a statewide emergency Thursday night after requests for aid from multiple counties “as they enter the sixth day of severe impacts” from the weather.

The ice weighs down trees and power lines making them prone to snap, especially in strong winds. That appears to be what caused the electrocution deaths: A large branch broke from a tree, landed on utility wires and pushed one onto the vehicle.

Washington’s neighbor, Ronald Briggs, declined to speak with The Associated Press beyond confirming that his 21-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son had been killed.

But he told Portland television station KGW that his daughter had come over to use the internet after hers went out. He and his wife had just gotten in their own car to run an errand when they heard the boom and saw the SUV apparently on fire.

He watched as the couple slid to their deaths — and then told his 15-year-old son, Ta’Ron Briggs, a high school sophomore, to keep his distance, to no avail.

“I told him, ‘Don’t go down there — try to get away from them.’ And he slid, and he touched the water, and he, and he died too,” Briggs said. “I have six kids. I lost two of them in one day.”

“It just hurt,” he said. “Being a good father cannot solve this right now.”

___

Johnson reported from Seattle.

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6350079 2024-01-18T21:21:53+00:00 2024-01-19T12:27:43+00:00
Election offices are sent envelopes with fentanyl or other substances. Authorities are investigating https://www.pilotonline.com/2023/11/09/election-offices-are-sent-envelopes-with-fentanyl-or-other-substances-authorities-are-investigating/ Thu, 09 Nov 2023 15:57:10 +0000 https://www.pilotonline.com/?p=5807946&preview=true&preview_id=5807946 By CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY, GENE JOHNSON and ED KOMENDA (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Authorities were hunting Thursday for whoever sent suspicious letters — including some containing fentanyl — to elections offices in at least five states this week, delaying the counting of ballots in some local races in the latest instance of threats faced by election workers around the country.

The letters were sent to elections offices in the presidential battlegrounds of Georgia and Nevada, as well as California, Oregon and Washington, with some being intercepted before they arrived. Four of the letters contained fentanyl, the FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service reported in a statement to elections officials Thursday.

“Law enforcement is working diligently to intercept any additional letters before they are delivered,” the statement said.

The Pierce County auditor’s office in Tacoma, Washington, released images of the letter it received, showing it had been postmarked in Portland, Oregon, and read in part, “End elections now.”

In Seattle, King County Elections Director Julie Wise said that letter appeared to be the same one her office got — and that it was “very similar” to one King County received during the August primary, which also contained fentanyl.

Among the offices that appeared to be targeted was Fulton County in Georgia, which includes Atlanta and is the largest voting jurisdiction in one of the nation’s most important presidential swing states. Authorities were working to intercept the letter. In the meantime, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said officials were sending the overdose-reversal drug naloxone to the office as a precaution.

“This is domestic terrorism, and it needs to be condemned by anyone that holds elected office and anyone that wants to hold elective office anywhere in America,” said Raffensperger, a Republican.

In California, the United States Postal Service intercepted two suspicious envelopes that were headed to election facilities in Los Angeles and Sacramento.

Authorities in Lane County, Oregon, which includes the University of Oregon, were investigating a piece of mail that arrived at the local election office Wednesday. No one who came in contact with it had experienced any negative health effects, said Devon Ashbridge, spokeswoman for the Lane County Elections Office in Eugene.

The incident prompted officials to close the office and delayed an afternoon pickup of ballots. Ashbridge declined to provide further details.

“Someone attempted to terrorize our elections staff, and that’s not OK,” Ashbridge said.

On Wednesday, authorities in Washington state said four county election offices had to be evacuated as election workers were processing ballots cast in Tuesday’s election, delaying vote-counting.

Election offices in King, Skagit, Spokane and Pierce counties received envelopes containing powders. Local law enforcement officials said the substances in King and Spokane counties field-tested positive for fentanyl. In at least one other case, the substance was baking soda.

Pierce County Auditor Linda Farmer released images of the envelope and letter her office received. The letter contained a warning about the vulnerability of “ballot drops” and read: “End elections now. Stop giving power to the right that they don’t have. We are in charge now and there is no more need for them.”

The letter featured an antifascist symbol, a progress pride flag and a pentagram. While the symbols have sometimes been associated with leftist politics, they also have been used by conservative figures to label and stereotype the left, and the sender’s political leanings were unclear.

Elections offices in two Washington counties — King and Okanogan — also received suspicious envelopes while processing ballots during the August primary, and the letter sent to King County tested positive for traces of fentanyl. Those letters remain under investigation by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and FBI.

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs called the incidents in his state “acts of terrorism to threaten our elections.”

White House spokeswoman Olivia Dalton said the Biden administration was aware of the investigation: “We are grateful for the election and poll workers who served this week to ensure the security of our democratic processes.”

Fentanyl, an opioid that can be 50 times as powerful as the same amount of heroin, is driving an overdose crisis deadlier than any the U.S. has ever seen as it is pressed into pills or mixed into other drugs. Briefly touching fentanyl cannot cause an overdose, and researchers have found that the risk of fatal overdose from accidental exposure is low.

Jeanmarie Perrone, director of the Center for Addiction Medicine and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania said studies simulating exposure from opening envelopes containing powders showed that very little, if any, of the powder becomes aerosolized to cause toxicity through inhalation.

She noted that factory workers in manufacturing facilities often wear some level of protective equipment, but even incidental nasal exposure has not been found to cause toxicity in those workers.

“We have really good evidence that it wouldn’t be exposed through the skin, or through inhalation,” Perrone said.

It was not immediately clear how authorities came to suspect that a letter might have been sent to Georgia’s biggest election office. Raffensperger said the state alerted all 159 of its counties of the possible threat Wednesday, but believes only Fulton County is being targeted.

It’s the latest disruption since the 2020 election to the office that oversees voting in and around Atlanta.

Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts, speaking at a news conference Thursday with Raffensperger, said the county’s election workers had been under threat since at least when two of them were singled out following the 2020 presidential election, with then-Republican President Donald Trump, attorney Rudolph Giuliani and others falsely alleging that election workers were stuffing ballots to aid Democrats. Democrat Joe Biden narrowly won the state.

Part of the Fulton County prosecution that indicted Trump, Giuliani and 17 others includes criminal charges focusing on statements and acts made against election workers.

“There’s people out there who want to do harm to our workers and want to disrupt, interrupt, the flow of democracy and free, open and transparent elections, and we’re prepared for it,” said Pitts, an elected Democrat.

Pitts said he believes that in 2024 Georgia’s most populous county will be the “focal point” of election scrutiny.

“So this was a good trial run for us, I hate to say it,” he said.

Many election offices across the United States have taken steps to increase the security of their buildings and boost protections for workers amid an onslaught of harassment and threats following the 2020 election and the false claims that it was rigged.

It’s a “sad reality” that election officials are still facing threats, said David Becker, a former attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division who works with election officials through the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research.

“While it may be unlikely this attack would cause serious damage, it seems clearly designed to terrorize the public servants in these offices who run elections,” Becker said.

___

Komenda reported from Tacoma, Washington, and Johnson from Seattle. Associated Press writers Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Ali Swenson in New York; Josh Boak in Chicago; Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; Adam Beam in Sacramento, California; and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.

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5807946 2023-11-09T10:57:10+00:00 2023-11-09T20:33:42+00:00
Lahaina family finds cherished heirlooms and devastation in first home visit after deadly wildfire https://www.pilotonline.com/2023/09/26/lahaina-family-finds-cherished-heirlooms-and-devastation-in-first-home-visit-after-deadly-wildfire/ Wed, 27 Sep 2023 02:32:27 +0000 https://www.pilotonline.com/?p=5225597&preview=true&preview_id=5225597 By AUDREY McAVOY and GENE JOHNSON (Associated Press)

LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — Leola Vierra stepped gingerly among the hardened pools of melted metal, charred wood and broken glass that are almost all that remain of the home where she lived for nearly 50 years.

Sifting through the rubble, she found two cow-patterned vessels, part of her extensive collection of bovine figurines. Nearby, her son discovered the blackened remnants of his late grandfather’s pistol from his days as a Lahaina policeman from the late 1940s to 1970s. There was no sign of the beloved cat, Kitty Kai, that used to greet her when she came home from work and church.

“I’m so sad — devastated,” she said. “This was my home.”

Vierra, her husband and two adult children returned to the property Tuesday for the first time since the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century whipped through on Aug. 8, obliterating the historic town of Lahaina and killing at least 97 people. They were among the first small group of residents to be allowed back into the burn zone to see where their homes once stood.

They wore boots, white coveralls, face masks and gloves to protect them from toxic ash and other dangers, but their visit was cut short after about 15 minutes when workers showed up and cordoned off the property with yellow caution tape.

A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official informed them over the phone that a crew did a “last quality assurance check” on Saturday afternoon and didn’t like not knowing what was underneath the crumpled remnants of the roof. A team would return Wednesday morning and the agency would call with an update, the official said.

Afterward, the family milled about on the sidewalk and looked toward the property. Vierra’s son, Mika, said they would come back when they get clearance so they can look around some more.

The four-bedroom house, which Vierra designed, was in the hills overlooking the ocean on Maui’s coast. It had a pool, which now sits half full, and an outdoor kitchen — she called it the cabana — which is gone.

The family ran four stores that catered to tourists, selling aloha shirts and muumuus along with leis that Vierra’s husband, Mike Vierra, would make from plumeria blossoms he picked in their yard. Three of the stores burned down. Of the family’s dozen plumeria trees, three survived.

Three small banyan trees — one planted for each of her three children — also appeared to have survived and even showed signs of new growth.

Officials opened the first area for reentry — a section of about two dozen parcels in the north of Lahaina — on Monday and Tuesday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Residents and property owners could obtain passes to enter the burn zone.

The Vierras have been staying at a resort hotel, like thousands of other survivors whom the government has put up in temporary housing across Maui. They waited until Tuesday so that Mika could join them after arriving from Utah, where he works in sales.

Mika drove to the property with his parents straight from the airport. He said he and his sister have decided to rebuild when the cleanup is done, whenever that is.

“We’ll be sure to rebuild something nice where our old house used to be,” he said.

___

Johnson reported from Seattle.

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5225597 2023-09-26T22:32:27+00:00 2023-09-27T14:55:52+00:00
Things to know about aid, lawsuits and tourism nearly a month after fire leveled a Hawaii community https://www.pilotonline.com/2023/09/06/things-to-know-about-aid-lawsuits-and-tourism-nearly-a-month-after-fire-leveled-a-hawaii-community/ Wed, 06 Sep 2023 18:38:35 +0000 https://www.pilotonline.com/?p=5183271&preview=true&preview_id=5183271 By GENE JOHNSON, JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER and AUDREY McAVOY (Associated Press)

HONOLULU (AP) — Nearly a month after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century killed at least 115 people, authorities on Maui are working their way through a list of the missing that has grown almost as quickly as names have been removed.

Lawsuits are piling up in court over liability for the inferno, and businesses across the island are fretting about the loss of tourism.

Government officials from Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen to President Joe Biden have pledged support, and thousands of people have been put up in hotels and elsewhere as they await clearance to visit and inspect the properties where they once lived.

A look at things to know about how the recovery in Lahaina is taking shape following the Aug. 8 disaster:

___

HOW MANY PEOPLE DIED?

The official confirmed count stands at 115, a figure that has not changed since Aug. 21. But many more names remain on a list of people who are considered unaccounted for, and it is unclear whether the toll of the deceased will rise — or whether it will ever be known how many perished.

Maui County Police Chief John Pelletier has repeatedly pleaded for patience as authorities try to verify who is missing, who has been accounted for and who has died.

Officials have also sometimes clouded the situation. Police on Aug. 24 released a “credible” list, compiled by the FBI, of 388 missing people for whom authorities had a first and last name and a contact number for whoever reported them missing.

Many of them, or their relatives, came forward to say they were safe, resulting in the removal of 245 names on Friday. Some others are known to have died in the fire, but their remains have not yet been identified.

Gov. Josh Green had said the number of missing would drop to double digits with Friday’s update, but when police released it, there were 263 newly added names, for a new total of 385.

Over the weekend Green posted a video on X, formerly known as Twitter, seeking to clarify, saying, “The official number has been 385 … but there are only 41 — 41 active investigations after people filed missing persons reports.”

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WHO’S RESPONSIBLE?

Formal investigations will aim to determine the cause of the fire and review how officials handled it. But about a dozen lawsuits have already been filed blaming Hawaii Electric Company, the for-profit, investor-owned utility that serves 95% of the state’s electric customers.

Among the lawsuits is one by Maui County accusing the utility of negligently failing to shut off power despite exceptionally high winds and dry conditions.

Hawaii Electric has said in a statement that it is “very disappointed that Maui County chose this litigious path while the investigation is still unfolding.”

Other lawsuits have come from residents who lost their homes. On Monday, the father of Rebecca Rans, a 57-year-old woman with rheumatoid arthritis who died while trying to escape the fire, sued Maui County, the state, Hawaiian Electric and the state’s largest landowner, Kamehameha Schools, a charitable trust formerly known as the Bishop Estate.

The lawsuit alleges that the county and the Bishop Estate failed to maintain their land by mowing or otherwise removing the dry, invasive grasses that have taken over former sugar and pineapple plantations in the region and which helped fuel the fires on Aug. 8.

“All the landowners knew how dangerous it was to have that huge volume of dry grass next to subdivisions, and could have saved hundreds of lives at a cost of less than $1,000 per acre to cut the brush down,” attorney James Bickerton said in a news release.

The Associated Press sent an email seeking comment to the county. The Department of the Attorney General said in a written statement that the state is reviewing the lawsuit, and Hawaiian Electric declined to comment in an email sent by spokesperson Darren Pai.

“Our hearts are with all affected by the Maui fires,” Kamehameha Schools said in a written statement. “We are committed to restoring our Native Hawaiian people and culture through education, which includes stewarding and uplifting the health and resiliency of our ’āina (lands) and Native communities. As many aspects of the fires are still under investigation, we have no further comment at this time.”

In another case, lawyers representing Lahaina residents and business owners claim that cable TV and phone companies overloaded and destabilized some utility poles, which snapped in high winds, helping cause the fire.

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HOW IS THE GOVERNMENT HELPING PEOPLE?

Much of the immediate disaster relief aid has been organized by community members, such as a supply distribution center operating out of a Hawaiian homestead community in Lahaina where most of the homes survived.

Hawaii U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz said during remarks Tuesday on the Senate floor that federal support must continue.

“It’s our responsibility here in Congress to provide relief — in any way that we can, for as long as people need it,” he said.

As of Monday night, 5,852 people were staying at 24 hotels serving as temporary shelters around Maui, according to the county.

At the hotels, they’re receiving American Red Cross services including meals, mental health support and financial assistance.

More than 1,000 Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel have been on Maui helping survivors, Schatz said.

FEMA will also need to complete “one of the most complex debris removal operations in its history,” he said, which may take as long as a year and cost up to a billion dollars.

Gov. Green said in a video on social media Monday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has cleared more than 200 parcels.

“This is important because we can start getting people back to inspect their own land and get some closure soon,” he said.

FEMA has given up to $19.4 million of assistance, Green said.

Help is also coming from the rich and famous: Oprah Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson announced the creation of a $10 million fund to make direct payments to people on Maui who are unable to return to their homes.

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SHOULD TOURISTS VISIT MAUI?

Officials said last week that the visitor traffic to the island has dropped 70% since Aug. 9, the day after Lahaina burned. Maui relies heavily on tourism for jobs, and the economy is reeling.

Lahaina’s restaurants and historic sites, once popular tourist draws, are now charred ruins. Large resort hotels farther up the west coast of Maui were spared but are now housing displaced residents.

Authorities are encouraging travelers to visit the island and support the economy, but ask that they avoid west Maui and instead stay in other areas like Kihei and Wailea.

Celebrities including Native Hawaiian actor Jason Momoa and Aerosmith singer and Maui homeowner Steven Tyler are also among those urging people to visit.

“Everything’s beautiful, except we gotta come there and make it more beautiful, OK?” Tyler said during a weekend concert in Philadelphia.

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Johnson reported from Seattle.

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A man accused of locking a woman in a homemade cell had a handwritten plan and sketch, FBI says https://www.pilotonline.com/2023/08/03/a-man-accused-of-locking-a-woman-in-a-homemade-cell-had-a-handwritten-plan-and-sketch-fbi-says/ Fri, 04 Aug 2023 03:52:39 +0000 https://www.pilotonline.com/?p=5120990&preview=true&preview_id=5120990 By ANDREW SELSKY and GENE JOHNSON (Associated Press)

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — He called it “Operation Take Over,” with a list that included a chilling reminder to go after women who wouldn’t be missed to avoid “any kind of an investigation,” according to the FBI.

Accompanying the bullet-point notes was a sketch of an apparent dungeon, to be built with cinder blocks, foam insulation and waterproof concrete.

Police found the legal pad with the notes in the southern Oregon home of a man who is now a suspect in sexual assaults around the country. Also in the home: a cinder block cell where police say the man, Negasi Zuberi, held a woman he had allegedly kidnapped in Seattle until she escaped by pounding at the door with bloodied hands.

Court and police records show Zuberi, 29, had been on law enforcement’s radar before — for alleged offenses such as assaulting the mother of their children, punching someone in the face and being a bad tenant whose landlord sought to evict him.

The FBI set up a website asking possible victims to come forward. The site says the FBI’s investigation has extended to states where Zuberi, who used several aliases, including Sakima, previously resided since August 2016. Those states could include California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Utah, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Alabama and Nevada, the site says.

“Sakima has several different methods to gain control of his victims, including drugging their drinks, pretending to be a police officer, and soliciting the services of sex workers and then violently sexually assaulting them,” the FBI said on the website. “Some of the encounters may have been filmed to make it appear as if the assault was consensual.”

In the Seattle kidnapping on July 15, Zuberi solicited a woman for prostitution in an area known for sex work and afterward posed as an undercover police officer, the FBI said Wednesday. He handcuffed her, put her in leg irons and drove to Klamath Falls, Oregon, stopping to rape her on the way, according to court documents. After the woman escaped, Zuberi fled but was arrested by state police in Reno, Nevada, the next afternoon, the FBI said.

Zuberi is married and has at least one child, but the FBI did not say whether they were living in the Klamath Falls home and declined to answer questions about them.

Zuberi did not follow item No. 1 in the “Operation Take Over” plan that police found in the house — a reminder to leave his phone at home, authorities say. FBI Special Agent Travis Gluesenkamp said in an affidavit that GPS location data from Zuberi’s cellphone showed he was in Seattle on July 15. Both his phone and the woman’s phone also traveled from Seattle to Klamath Falls that day, Gluesenkamp said.

Zuberi is now behind bars in Nevada, waiting to be extradited to Oregon, where he is charged in federal court with interstate kidnapping and transporting an individual across state lines with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.

The case has rattled Klamath Falls, a town of 22,000 residents that is close to the California border and known for bird watching, golfing and fishing.

“I think a lot of people are shocked that something like this happened in our community,” Klamath Falls Police Capt. Rob Reynolds, who is working on the case, said Thursday.

Reynolds said authorities “have reason to believe that there’s prior victims from several states,” but would not disclose details, citing the ongoing investigation.

Since authorities announced the case against Zuberi in a news conference in Portland, Oregon, on Wednesday, some proceedings against him have emerged in court and municipal records.

In 2020, he was accused of attacking and threatening to kill a woman and the children she shares with him, NBC News reported. The woman’s petition seeking a restraining order against Justin Kouassi, one of his known aliases, was filed that year in Contra Costa County, California.

“He physically attacks me, he hits me, he brakes and throws things, he screams at the kids and me,” the woman wrote. “We get woken up every night from him being drunk and loud and scares us.”

It’s unclear whether the restraining order was issued.

Zuberi recently lived in Vancouver, Washington, where court records show the landlord sought to evict him.

Landlord Abishek Kandar said in a text message that Zuberi didn’t pay rent for six months, illegally sublet the home, bred puppies, damaged the property and threatened neighbors.

“He is a horrible person,” Kandar said. “He deserves to be in jail.”

According to court records in Colorado, a man with one of Zuberi’s alleged aliases, Justin Kouassi, was accused of punching a person in the face in Denver last year. An arrest warrant was issued for Kouassi, court records show, but Denver police do not have any record of Zuberi or anyone with one of his aliases being arrested. There is still an active warrant out for him.

Heather Fraley, a lawyer with the federal public defender’s office in Las Vegas who was listed as Zuberi’s attorney, declined to comment Wednesday. Zuberi’s public defender in Oregon, Devin Huseby, on Thursday also declined to comment.

Transferring Zuberi from Nevada can take several weeks, said Kevin Sonoff, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Oregon. Zuberi could face up to life in prison if convicted of the federal charges in Oregon.

After arriving in Klamath Falls on July 15, Zuberi put the woman in the makeshift cell in the garage and said he was leaving to do paperwork, according to the criminal complaint.

The woman “briefly slept and awoke to the realization that she would likely die if she did not attempt to escape,” the complaint says.

She managed to break some of the door’s welded joints, creating a small opening that she climbed through, Reynolds said.

After the woman escaped and flagged down a passing motorist, police came to the house and found the handwritten notes, with plans for an apparent dungeon buried 100 feet (30 meters) below ground.

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Johnson reported from Seattle. Associated Press writer Thomas Peipert in Denver, Colorado; Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon; and Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, contributed.

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