erin 🩵

Apparently there isn’t much news coverage of this outside of the islands

Towns are flooded, homes destroyed and collapsed, roads collapsed, lives at risk, gas leaks from the flood damage

Haleiwa and Waialua are currently evacuated because the 120 year old dam is at risk of bursting

Mind you that damn is owned by Dole. Theyve known about it needing to be fixed for years and years and years. Despite having more than enough money they refuse

The state has been trying to buy it out from them for years so they can fix it, but the sale hasn’t gone through

Keep in mind that the Dole family were the ones who illegally imprisoned Queen Liliuʻokalani and illegally overthrew the monarchy.

If I see another goddamn person say how sad this is for the tourists whose “trips were ruined” and compare a messed up vacation to people losing their homes, belongings, and livelihoods, I’m going to lose my mind

I am so lucky that my family or friend’s are safe and the few whose houses flooded didnt have it too bad, but so so so many were not as fortunate

If you haven’t heard anything about this until now, I suggest looking into it

The sirens didn’t go off until the flood had been going on for hours. Our state government is spending so much money on a fucking monorail we don’t need rather than fixing the infrastructure.

It’s been the locals and Kanaka doing the most to help get people to safety from the start

I don’t really know how to end this

I just need to know people are aware

Dole the fruit company started the dole plantation in 1901 in Hawaʻi as the “hawaiian pineapple company”

Dole the fruit company got big from plantations, colonialism, and exploitation in Hawaiʻi

Dole the fruit company monopolized land for their plantations, exploited local labor as well as immigrant labor from the people they shipped in to work, and depleted the soil and introduced toxic pesticides

Dole the fruit company was the cousin of Sanford B Dole who helped overthrow the monarchy and became the governor of hawaiʻi afterwards

Dole purchased the island of Lānaʻi and made it tbe largest pineapple plantation in the world

Lānaʻi is now 98% owned by larry ellison, cofounder and chairman of oracle

Dole the fruit company had sugarcane plantations across hawaiʻi as well as pineapple

For over 150 years, millions of gallons of water were diverted daily from natural streams to sugarcane plantations on Maui

This caused irreparable damage to the ecosystem and is largely if not wholly responsible for how dry Maui is to this day

The dryness of Maui played a huge factor into the severity of the Lahaina fires

That control over water shifted political power to colonizers which aided them in overthrowing the monarchy

yes, dole the fruit company owns a dam in Hawaiʻi

they still have massive pineapple farms in hawaiʻi

The dole plantation on Oahu is now a tourist attraction where they’ll take you on the “pineapple express train tour” or the “plantation garden tour”

BUT

that in no way means it isn’t still an issue

this is an earthen dam, not a concrete one

it was not meant to last this long

Earthen dams are weakened every time it rains. So even though it’s no longer at imminent risk of failure, the danger is still there

Earthen damns begin to erode once water runs over them

Here’s a good, local news article on this that @proustianrevelry linked in the rbs