Maui suing cellphone carriers over alerts it says people never got about deadly wildfires

Honolulu — Had emergency responders known about widespread cellphone outages during the height of last summer's deadly Maui wildfires, they would've used other methods to warn about the disaster, county officials said in a lawsuit.

Alerts the county sent to cellphones warning people to immediately evacuate were never received, unbeknownst to the county, the lawsuit said.

Maui officials failed to activate sirens that would have warned the entire population of the approaching flames. That has raised questions about whether everything was done to alert the public in a state that possesses an elaborate emergency warning system for a variety of dangers including wars, volcanoes, hurricanes and wildfires.