Actions by officials on Maui have contributed to an air of suspicion about the handling of the Lahaina fire that killed over 100 and left around 1000 people unaccounted for, including many children. Media access is tightly controlled, drones are grounded for getting too close to the suspected origin site of the fire and now satellite images from the fire have been taken down from a news site. The censorship incident appears to be isolated but troubling just the same. The photos were widely published and remain online elsewhere.
A Gateway Pundit reader sent in a tip (thank you) that an interactive satellite map APP comparing before and after photos of Lahaina has been taken down. The map was featured in a news article by Scooty Nickerson with the Bay Area News Group headlined: Interactive Maui wildfire map: Before and after images of Lahaina show scale of devastation
A message where the images once were reads: “At the request of responding organizations in Hawai’i and out of respect for the ongoing situation, the imagery and data in this app have been removed.” The before picture is still available by clicking the “close” button in the display.
The caption for the deleted imagery remains: “This application provides pre and post-event imagery of the August 2023 wildfire in Lahaina, Hawaii. Use the slider to tool to toggle between pre-event imagery and post-event imagery highlighting structure and landscape damage from the fire. Maxar imagery provided through their Open Data program taken after the wildfire in Hawaii in August 2023. Source: Maxar, August 9th, 2023. Imagery: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=eee0c69f4761496d82cfe5bdb4bbf242”
The Maxar before and after images are still available on the YouTube channels of news stations including KTLA:
The images are also featured in an AP article on the fires still online.
There is a trend among “woke” journalists and progressive activists in and out of government to censor the news out of “respect” for cultures and communities and to protect progressive interests. The efforts to censor the news in Maui have not been completely successful, but the effort to control the news coming out of Maui has been largely successful.
Independent journalists on the ground in Maui like Nick Sortor as well as Fox News host Will Cain have done the reporting that others have not.