In response to the inferno that swept through Lahaina, Maui on Aug. 8, the Seattle Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has sought the expertise of the ATF’s National Response Team to unravel the origin and cause of the fire.
The team, composed of specialists from the Honolulu Field Office and the Seattle Field Division, arrived on the island on Thursday to collaborate with local authorities and partners in the investigation.
The Lahaina fire led to over 114 known deaths so far, and many missing people. Locals say the known dead are well over 400, and are being underreported, and that the local morgues have run out of body bags.
The disaster prompted the ATF to engage its resources to support the Maui County Fire Department officials in their efforts to ascertain the cause and source of the fire.
However, the agency will not be exploring potential criminal aspects in their investigation, the Seattle branch of AFT said. Other agencies may be looking into those criminal aspects.
The squad dispatched for this mission consists of an electrical engineer from the ATF Fire Research Laboratory, two Certified Fire Investigators (CFI) and a CFI candidate from the Honolulu Field Office, and an Arson and Explosives Group Supervisor from the Seattle Field Division. Also on site now are U.S. Marshal officers, and special agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
This deployment marks the 21st activation of the National Response Team during this fiscal year and the 910th since its inception in 1978.
The NRT’s track record includes participation in investigations of incidents such as the ship fire on the Grande Costa D’Avorio in 2023, the Nashville “Christmas Day” bombing, multiple fire scenes resulting from civil unrest across the Midwest in 2020, the series of bombings in Austin, Texas, in 2018, as well as national-level tragedies including the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon. The team also investigated the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The culmination of their findings results in an “Origin and Cause Report” that is eventually submitted to local officials and may be released to the public voluntarily or under pressure.
ATF going to Maui: another federal bureaucracy seeking a reason for existence. That these bureaucrats are dispatched to what is an obvious fire essentially means they were otherwise doing nothing important. Yet we taxpayers standby unconcerned while the federal bureaucracy grows constantly by a few employees at regular intervals.
Must be a few firearms dealers with typos in their paperwork. BATFE is showing up to pull the licenses. Cheers –
So when will Alaska start sending the ATF on fire investigations here? Or maybe our own Alaska Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office? Is this happening in Hawaii because state and local officials have so efficiently proven themselves inept, or is this just what we can expect nationwide?………or just in locations with high voltage electric lines?
If they find evidence of arson, will the ATF drop everything and go home?
This could be tough on the future of electric vehicles if electricity transmission becomes politically impossible due to wind and the potential of fire.
SO….WHAT’S THE F@CKING POINT??? IF THE ATF HAS ALREADY DECIDED THAT THEY ARE NOT GOING TO CONSIDER EVERY ASPECT OF THIS FIRE 🔥
Somebody needs to look into the criminal aspects of this.
They’ve been hot from the start to pin this on the electric utility, just like in California, and sure enough, they found a video of high winds dropping a line that sparked a fire. This provides deep pockets to sue; both the utility and their insurance corporation. No crime, even if there are regulatory violations……..which are unlikely, until the Hawaii Legislature attacks the electric utility companies like California did. Ultimately, you’ll see insurance companies pulling out of Hawaii like they are California, and you’ll see power outages when the wind blows so the utility lowers their liability.
None of that is good for homeowners, commercial building owners, or the environmentally woke who drive electric cars in their dreams……….
Criminality is in the response, both during and beforehand. Cheers –
This was a travesty of epic proportions 😡
What is the ATF’s purpose for going there? This is not in their pervue, they need to stick to harassing gun dealers and making up illegal laws that get quashed by federal courts.
They want a nice taxpayer funded trip to Maui
To breathe in smoke carcinogens and get filthy dirty. Yeah. Think again Chuck
Just another in a long line of epic fails from our federal, state and local governments. This of course would also include our corporate utilities.
What, you’re looking for the government to protect you from every conceivable threat that arises from modern life? Sure doesn’t sound very Conservative/Libertarian to me!
We are just looking for well paid, so called public servants to do there freekin Job! We pay there wages! Don’t you get it? And where the hell is a retired navy ship or two to house thees people and there damn pets too!##$*$@????!!!!!??????
The Navy tends to decommission retired ships. Many aren’t fit for service.
I don’t think many are in Hawaii.
Besides, Biden’s navy has staffing and maintenance problems.
You’re complaining about “corporate utilities”, which may be responsible these fires since they own and operate the electrical systems, but they are not a part of the Government. You sound angry, Lori, and you’re not making sense.
Government can only impact power system safety by setting standards, laws, and regulations, and by enforcing the same…again, not really consistent with the Conservative/Libertarian viewpoint of MRAK.
So many people on this site despise the government until they need it, or until it pays them a large PFD. Such hypocrisy.
And by the way, in addition to correcting your logic, please also check your spelling, grammar, and punctuation before pushing the “Post Comment” button. Yours is atrocious.
I guess you have never heard of corporate lobbyists
Should call the ATF the WTF!!!!
They used to be called “revenuers” because they were a division of the irs… To enforce tax laws against making your own hootch. Now they investigate bombings? Harass gun dealers and owners? They are an agency that has no purpose – they duplicate work the fbi does. Past time to disband the atf… sorry, the wtf.
Check out YouTube videos of ATFers harassing law abiding citizens. They dress like slobs; no uniforms, ball caps on backwards, shorts and tee shirts. They’ll fit right in over in Hawaii. This “mission” is what’s known as a junket. The only good thing about it is that the same crew that is in Hawaii won’t be bothering some gun store owner, hoping to find a small paperwork glitch so they can jerk his FFL.
“What, you’re looking for the government to protect you from every conceivable threat that arises from modern life?……..”
Nope. I’d like to see the ATF stay in their basement offices in DC where they belong. I fail to see why they even have to harass people with backyard stills. I remember when it was illegal to brew beer.
You really show your butt sometime. But you are progressive, and that is your default programming. I suppose you can’t help yourself.
The loss of human life is high. The impact on 1000s of people’s lives is incalculable. And you snark.
Troll doesn’t come close to it.
The key concepts of libertarianism have developed over many centuries. The first inklings of them can be found in ancient China, Greece, and Israel; they began to be developed into something resembling modern libertarian philosophy in the work of such seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century thinkers as John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine.
Individualism. Libertarians see the individual as the basic unit of social analysis. Only individuals make choices and are responsible for their actions. Libertarian thought emphasizes the dignity of each individual, which entails both rights and responsibility. The progressive extension of dignity to more people — to women, to people of different religions and different races — is one of the great libertarian triumphs of the Western world.
Individual Rights. Because individuals are moral agents, they have a right to be secure in their life, liberty, and property. These rights are not granted by government or by society; they are inherent in the nature of human beings. It is intuitively right that individuals enjoy the security of such rights; the burden of explanation should lie with those who would take rights away.
Spontaneous Order. A great degree of order in society is necessary for individuals to survive and flourish. It’s easy to assume that order must be imposed by a central authority, the way we impose order on a stamp collection or a football team. The great insight of libertarian social analysis is that order in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes. Over human history, we have gradually opted for more freedom and yet managed to develop a complex society with intricate organization. The most important institutions in human society — language, law, money, and markets — all developed spontaneously, without central direction. Civil society — the complex network of associations and connections among people — is another example of spontaneous order; the associations within civil society are formed for a purpose, but civil society itself is not an organization and does not have a purpose of its own.
The Rule of Law. Libertarianism is not libertinism or hedonism. It is not a claim that “people can do anything they want to, and nobody else can say anything.” Rather, libertarianism proposes a society of liberty under law, in which individuals are free to pursue their own lives so long as they respect the equal rights of others. The rule of law means that individuals are governed by generally applicable and spontaneously developed legal rules, not by arbitrary commands; and that those rules should protect the freedom of individuals to pursue happiness in their own ways, not aim at any particular result or outcome.
Limited Government. To protect rights, individuals form governments. But government is a dangerous institution. Libertarians have a great antipathy to concentrated power, for as Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Thus they want to divide and limit power, and that means especially to limit government, generally through a written constitution enumerating and limiting the powers that the people delegate to government. Limited government is the basic political implication of libertarianism, and libertarians point to the historical fact that it was the dispersion of power in Europe — more than other parts of the world — that led to individual liberty and sustained economic growth.
Free Markets. To survive and to flourish, individuals need to engage in economic activity. The right to property entails the right to exchange property by mutual agreement. Free markets are the economic system of free individuals, and they are necessary to create wealth. Libertarians believe that people will be both freer and more prosperous if government intervention in people’s economic choices is minimized.
The Virtue of Production. Much of the impetus for libertarianism in the seventeenth century was a reaction against monarchs and aristocrats who lived off the productive labor of other people. Libertarians defended the right of people to keep the fruits of their labor. This effort developed into a respect for the dignity of work and production and especially for the growing middle class, who were looked down upon by aristocrats. Libertarians developed a pre‐Marxist class analysis that divided society into two basic classes: those who produced wealth and those who took it by force from others. Thomas Paine, for instance, wrote, “There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes.” Similarly, Jefferson wrote in 1824, “We have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” Modern libertarians defend the right of productive people to keep what they earn, against a new class of politicians and bureaucrats who would seize their earnings to transfer them to political clients and cronies.
Natural Harmony of Interests. Libertarians believe that there is a natural harmony of interests among peaceful, productive people in a just society. One person’s individual plans — which may involve getting a job, starting a business, buying a house, and so on — may conflict with the plans of others, so the market makes many of us change our plans. But we all prosper from the operation of the free market, and there are no necessary conflicts between farmers and merchants, manufacturers and importers. Only when government begins to hand out rewards on the basis of political pressure do we find ourselves involved in group conflict, pushed to organize and contend with other groups for a piece of political power.
Peace. Libertarians have always battled the age‐old scourge of war. They understood that war brought death and destruction on a grand scale, disrupted family and economic life, and put more power in the hands of the ruling class — which might explain why the rulers did not always share the popular sentiment for peace. Free men and women, of course, have often had to defend their own societies against foreign threats; but throughout history, war has usually been the common enemy of peaceful, productive people on all sides of the conflict.
Blue abstract duck in front of a blue background with more abstract ducks
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Want to know more?
Libertarianism is a deep and rich philosophy, with many nuances and cases that cannot all fit into a single article. If this has piqued your interest in the philosophy of freedom, then check out our sister website, Libertarianism.org. Here, you can learn about the history of these ideas, how they can be applied to the modern world, and how freedom isn’t just for one country or people, but for everyone.
Learn More: “What is a Libertarian?” by Grant Babcock
… It may be appropriate to acknowledge at this point the reader’s likely suspicion that libertarianism seems to be just the standard framework of modern thought — individualism, private property, capitalism, equality under the law. Indeed, after centuries of intellectual, political, and sometimes violent struggle, these core libertarian principles have become the basic structure of modern political thought and of modern government, at least in the West and increasingly in other parts of the world.
However, three additional points need to be made: first, libertarianism is not just these broad liberal principles. Libertarianism applies these principles fully and consistently, far more so than most modern thinkers and certainly more so than any modern government. Second, while our society remains generally based on equal rights and capitalism, every day new exceptions to those principles are carved out in Washington and in Albany, Sacramento, and Austin (not to mention London, Bonn, Tokyo, and elsewhere). Each new government directive takes a little bit of our freedom, and we should think carefully before giving up any liberty. Third, liberal society is resilient; it can withstand many burdens and continue to flourish; but it is not infinitely resilient. Those who claim to believe in liberal principles but advocate more and more confiscation of the wealth created by productive people, more and more restrictions on voluntary interaction, more and more exceptions to property rights and the rule of law, more and more transfer of power from society to state, are unwittingly engaged in the ultimately deadly undermining of civilization.
No, Whidbey, it does NOT sound very Conservative / Libertarian because it is not.
Such thought processes are those of Leftist / Democrat ideologies, which fail time after time, of which ideologies you are a part of.
Wow, your comments longer than the article, I’ll not have what your having…..
Did you actually read it?
There is a time/place for political manifestos. This isn’t it.
What has the libertarian party platform have to do with this article on MRAK???
I appreciate some of what their platform says, but the fundamental flaw in the libertarian platform is simply this: as atheistic in philosophy, it assumes that man, left to his own devices, will choose to do the “right” thing. As Christians, we understand that humans are not basically “good” (which can only be defined by God’s moral character), but rather humans are “sinners”, which is understood as being selfish, making one’s self the arbiter of right and wrong in the place of God – not only for ourselves, but in any action or thought in our realm of experience. This plays itself out (as an example) in the road rage we see today – a young man driving 100mph weaving through traffic gives the finger to driver who moved over to let him by… and many other examples of stupid selfish thoughtlessness. It is this incredible idolatry of self and what they call “liberty” (it’s not freedom, it’s slavery to anarchy in its pure form) that forces me to reject libertarianism and that party. There is a huge difference between libertarianism and conservativism.
The libertard says “abortion is none of the government’s business – it should be up to the woman to choose.” In a sick society, or even a healthy one, who speaks for the unborn about to be murdered? So in a government ruled by libertarians, the guy with the biggest stick gets what he wants – this is the opposite of civil society, it is anarchy.
Dude, you should submit this sort of stuff to Suzanne as proposed articles. Cheers –
I kinda worry, with ATF involved, that they may decide to confiscate all the firearms before they investigate the fire.
I understand your inkling, but if the gun didn’t burn up in somebody’s house, why do they need to collect the others? Lahaina is a far cry from New Orleans with regard to crime.
It would be good to know if it was arson. But it doesn’t change the fact that somebody should not have seen the conditions making it possible. We often have these warm, dry, and windy conditions in Anchorage. More high density housing is what the assembly desires. Idiots.
Let the cover-up begin
Don’t believe anything they tell us. It’s going to be a cover up.
Dane Wiggington. Blackrock land grab. Satanic ritualistic killing of children. Over 1200 missing not being reported. An inferno that melts steel. The list goes on. If people don’t start looking at the evil in our midst then they truly are blind.
Are you sure you want the government in charge of investigating itself again? Tuskeegee experiment, JFK, RFK, MLK, Gulf of Tonkin attack, MKULTRA, Agent Orange, Oklahoma City bombing, Gulf War Syndrome (depleted uranium) TWA 800, Sandy Hook School, Twin Towers and Building 7 collapse, Las Vegas massacre (incident commander now Chief of Police in La Haina!), Hunter’s laptop, Ashley’s diary . . . . .
As I remember, in 1993, there was an effort to disband the ATF and put its responsibilities under the FBI’s jurisdiction. They needed a reason to exist. David Koresh jogged daily outside of the compound. The local sheriff visited with Koresh outside the compound during one of these jogs the day before the event. There was no need to attack the compound or invade it almost 2 months later since it was completely surrounded by a fence and heavily armed officials. Women and children burned to death. Regardless of whether the members were delusional or not, there was no reason to attack. Eventually, hunger and hopelessness would cause them to give up.
A is for alcohol. T is for tobacco. F is for firearms. As a former fire investigator, I’m afraid I do not understand what the role of this agency and it’s politically driven bureaucrats is in this incident. It seems to me that a team of trained competent fire investigators might be a better resource to determine the origin and source of the blazes. I tend to wonder what the ACTUAL reason for dispatching BATF agents is!
BATF bulldoze all the facts!! Coverup
C
The ATF seems to have gooen their marching orders from someone higher up the chain. Let the cover up begin. Waste of taxpayer money.
Check out YouTube videos of ATFers harassing law abiding citizens. They dress like slobs; no uniforms, ball caps on backwards, shorts and tee shirts. They’ll fit right in over in Hawaii. This “mission” is what’s known as a junket. The only good thing about it is that the same crew that is in Hawaii won’t be bothering some gun store owner, hoping to find a small paperwork glitch so they can jerk his FFL.
I heard on a podcast that the cause of the fire was indeed electrical. Hawaii had been warned about failing and obsolete isolaters on the transformers (I think I got that part right). Why weren’t these replaced or upgraded? The wokesters stopped spending on upgrades/maintenance to accelerate their green, carbon neutral systems. When the poles crashed, the sparks flew igniting the abandoned Dole pineapple plantation (outsourced to China) setting the vegetations afire. Yes, there is criminal neglect here.
Not everything you don’t like can be blamed on the “woke” Left. If there was indeed inadequate investment in the distribution system, I’d bet that it was more likely caused by too many MBAs, Private Equity, and the pressures of Capitalism that squeeze everything out of businesses in order to maximize profits in the next quarter. And if it’s Private Equity, they’ll also layoff many of the knowledgable staff and then sell off the business as soon as they have excised their pile of cash, leaving it for dead.
Sounds like your government.
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