Peggy Hall, from The Healthy American, showed a document, County of Maui Outdoor Warning Siren Testing, that states, "The all-hazard siren system can be used for a variety of both natural and human-caused events: including tsunamis, dam breaches, flooding, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, terrorist threats, hazardous material incidents, and more."

Failure to alert the people of Maui with the siren system was intentional.

Maui Emergency Management Agency Administrator Herman Andaya was asked whether he regretted not sounding the alarms, which are part of a larger statewide network, and he replied, ""I do not," and said that the alarms would have sent residents inland "into the fire." He said that the siren system is used primarily for tsunamis and people are instructed to go to higher ground and seek shelter in a concrete building, so they decided against sounding the alarm because they though people would seek higher ground. Critics pointed out that it is insulting that they thought people could not figure out there were fires. The alarm system was for all disaster, not just tsunamis.

Andaya resigned from office, purportedly due to health reasons, several days after he made the comments during a press conference.