The County of Maui has filed a third-party complaint against cellular service carriers, seeking to hold them responsible for failing to report outages during the Maui wildfires.
In the filing in state court, the county said AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Spectrum Mobile failed to properly notify the Maui Police Department about the widespread cellular service outages on Aug. 8 and 9, 2023.
That was during the height of the emergency response to the fires.
Federal law requires carriers to immediately report service outages to 911 service operators, including the nature and geographic extent of the outage and its approximate length.
“A timely and complete report is critical to the county’s ability to mitigate the impacts of a service outage during emergencies,” said Victoria Takayesu of Maui County's corporation counsel in a statement.
As part of its emergency response, Maui County said it utilized direct text messaging to distribute important evacuation information for at least 14 alerts.
It was later discovered that many of these alerts were not received because cell towers across the island, including all 21 cell towers servicing Lahaina, were experiencing widespread service outages.
The county is currently defending multiple lawsuits criticizing its emergency response during the August 2023 Maui Fires.
