I feel like a lot of people in the notes don’t really understand this fully.
As a Hawaii resident, and someone who saw this headline and the many others from this same news source, this rubs me the wrong way a bit.
This tweet isn’t necessary wrong, but it’s worded in a way to prioritize outrage, which as I understand it is how Twitter works.
The point is that yes, Hawaii has a problem with the prioritization of tourism, which takes resources away from residents.
But with this particular headline, it’s framing the issue kind of misleadingly.
These tourists are being kicked out so residents have the room and resources to recoup. They’re being moved to Oahu because that’s where the main international airport is, so it’ll be easier for them to leave when there are flights available.
They’re not being given luxury accommodations and allowed to live out their original vacation plans while residents have to just sit in the charred wreckage of their homes. They’re getting kicked the fuck out, as they should be in this situation.
There are resources available for Maui residents right now, including shelters and organizations collecting money specifically for community needs. (Source, source 2, both from the same news outlet that this headline is from)
So, again, it’s like kicking out house guests from your party when you need to deal with a sudden house fire.
Now, what you CAN be outraged about is the need to spend this amount of time and money kicking out house guests from a party during an emergency in addition to saving yourself and loved ones at all, BECAUSE THOSE AREN’T INVITED GUESTS
-they just showed up and started hanging out in your house and eating your food. Sometimes they leave money but usually they just leave trash
-your local HOA has seen this and looooves it because actually they’re getting lots of money out of it, so they start catering towards your uninvited guests and handing out invitations to your awesome house party. Which you didn’t plan or want and would like to stop
-your house is a permanent party house and you can’t even get to work or a quiet minute to yourself
-and now it’s on fire
The point is that, even though these resources need to be used to get tourists out for legitimate reasons right now, a disaster like this in most other states would likely not include a headline about how moving visitors out of the area is a needed priority. (Bc there wouldn’t be as many proportional to the population, except for other obvious tourist-y cities.)
And while there are shelters and other resources for residents right now, by necessity some of those resources are going to tourists, because that’s how things are here.
I’ve seen some people who seem to think that the news agency who wrote the headline is biased or that it’s a wording/framing issue, which I don’t think is the main point here.
I just felt this tweet was more focused on making people angry than actually providing information, although I’m not on Twitter so who knows, maybe there’s a whole thread diving deeper into the issue. But for tumblr, here’s a little more of the story.
Tl;dr: This is a tweet with limited context if you haven’t been following the story; this isn’t a case of tourists taking 100% of the resources leaving none for residents, they are being kicked out so residents can recover. But this extra step would be unnecessary if Hawaii wasn’t so commercialized.
And if you want to help Maui residents, the second source link up there leads to an article listing some orgs that are collecting donations. I’ll put it here again for convenience.
