Maui County filed a lawsuit Wednesday against wireless service providers for not notifying it of network outages or providing delayed, incomplete information while emergency management officials tried to send evacuation alerts during the Aug. 8 wildfires, which killed at least 101.
The county uses direct text messaging, or Wireless Emergency Alert messaging, to send important information to residents and visitors, according to the civil complaint filed Wednesday afternoon in Maui Circuit Court.
The third-party complaint is designed to hold the wireless carriers responsible for their failure to properly inform the Maui Police Department in a timely manner of widespread cellular service outages on Aug. 8 to 9 “during the height of the County’s emergency response” to the fires, according to a news release from the county.
“A timely and complete report is critical to the County’s ability to mitigate the impacts of a service outage during emergencies,” said County of Maui Corporation Counsel Victoria J. Takayesu, in a statement.
On Aug. 8-9, the lawsuit states, while “courageous first responders battled fires across the island and worked to provide first aid and evacuate individuals to safety,” officials used numerous alerts and warnings, “including through direct text messaging to individual cell phones.”
“The County sent at least fourteen (14) separate Wireless Emergency Alert messages to individuals’ cell phones during this time frame, warning residents to immediately evacuate and otherwise providing important information in connection with the wildfires,” wrote David J. Minkin, an attorney with McCorriston Miller Mukai MacKinnon LLP, who was retained by Takayesu. “Unbeknownst to the County, these alerts and warnings were not received by Maui’s residents, visitors, or citizens because cell towers across the island were experiencing widespread service outages.”
County officials later learned that all 21 cell towers serving West Maui, including Lahaina, experienced “total cell service failure” on Aug. 8-9, according to the suit. Numerous additional cell towers serving Kula and Olinda also failed during the fires on Aug. 8 and Aug. 9.
“Throughout its emergency response on Aug. 8 and Aug. 9, 2023, the County was not aware of these widespread failures,” according to the complaint.
Under federal law, the wireless carriers are required to “timely report service outages to the County’s 911 service operators,” in part because service outages can “prevent the transmission of emergency information such as 911 calls, emergency text messages, and communications between first responders,” the suit says, noting that reports must be sent to the county officials within 30 minutes of an outage.
The report must contain “details about the nature and geographic extent of the outage” to give 911-service operators the ability to “mitigate the impacts that loss of cell coverage has on emergency services.”
The lawsuit named Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile US Inc., Spectrum Mobile LLC, Spectrum Mobile Equipment, AT&T Mobility LLC and other unnamed defendants, alleging negligence, equitable indemnity, contribution and apportionment of fault and declaratory relief.
Cameron R. Blanchard, executive vice president of corporate communications for Charter Communications, declined comment.
Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T did not immediately reply to a Honolulu Star- Advertiser request for comment.
As a result of the wireless carriers’ “abdication of their duty to provide timely and full notifications” about the outages, emergency management officials were not provided with “information to use in coordinating its response to the Maui Wildfires” as police, firefighters and emergency medical service technicians responded to the Lahaina, Kula and Olinda fires.
A signal repeater on Lanai allowed first responder radios to work but the system was overloaded, the complaint alleges.
“As cell tower failure became widespread, ‘dead zones’ of zero cell service around Maui formed, which impacted first responders’ field software and ability to contact operations centers via non-radio means,” read the complaint.
On Aug. 8-9, the companies did not make timely reports of “service outages to the County.”
“In fact, some Cell Carriers (e.g., Verizon) failed to report any outages at all, while others (e.g., Charter) waited until days later to report service outages. None of the Cell Carriers provided full, timely, and regular notifications to the County about the nature, extent, geographic area impacted, and status of the cell service outages, as they were required to do by law,” wrote Minkin.
The complaint notes that the carriers have longstanding issues with notifying first responders and government agencies of network outages that impact emergency operations, which have prompted significant legal action.
Since 2015, the carriers named in the complaint have entered into at least six separate consent decrees with the Federal Communications Commission to “resolve the FCC’s investigations into the Cell Carriers’ failure to report cell service outages that impacted 911 services.”
“Such failures to report include, but are not limited to, AT&T’s failure in 2017 to timely report two outages that together prevented the completion of approximately 15,200 calls to 911 during a five-hour window; Verizon’s failure in 2020 to report a two-hour outage affecting 10 states; and T-Mobile’s belated reports in response to a 12-hour outage in 2020 that prevented the transmission of 23,000 attempted 911 calls, Minkin wrote.
As a condition of settling those investigations, the carriers promised “to develop compliance plans, compliance programs, training programs and operating rules; to develop checklists for timely reporting outages, and to establish internal auditing procedures, among other things,” to ensure timely and accurate reporting of cellular service outages to 911-service providers.
“As of the date of this filing, the Cell Carriers still have not reported to the County the true extent and reach of the cell service outages on August 8 and August 9, 2023, as they are mandated to do under federal law,” according to the complaint.
