FACT FOCUS: No, Oprah Winfrey didn't block access to a private road amid tsunami warning evacuations
The warnings followed one of the century's most powerful earthquakes, an 8.8 magnitude quake that struck off a Russian peninsula and generated tsunami warnings and advisories for a wide swath of the Pacific. Posts on X and TikTok contended Winfrey refused to open her private road, or was slow to do so during the evacuation.
But the roadway does not actually belong to Winfrey, and efforts to open the road to the public started soon after the tsunami warning was issued.
Here's a closer look at the facts.
CLAIM: Winfrey owns the private road and refused to allow public access for residents trying to reach higher ground, only relenting following public pressure.
FACT: This is false. Despite being commonly known as 'Oprah's road,' the portion of Kealakapu Road is privately owned — but not by Winfrey. It belongs to Haleakala Ranch, which also owns the land surrounding the road, its president Scott Meidell told The Associated Press. Winfrey has an easement agreement with the ranch, which allows her to use and make certain improvements to the road, her representative told the AP in a statement. Winfrey has paved the road as part of the agreement, Meidell said.
The decision to open the road to the public is principally up to the landowner, Winfrey's representative noted. Meidell said Haleakala Ranch 'had conversations with Ms. Winfrey's land management staff during this process. So, they're consulted to be sure.'
Haleakala Ranch contacted the local fire department and the Maui Emergency Management Agency just after 3 p.m. local time, shortly after the tsunami warning went into effect, Meidell said. The road was made accessible shortly after 5 p.m., he said, and ranch personnel assisted in the evacuation of around 150 to 200 vehicles until the final group of cars were escorted up the road at 7 p.m.
Maui County officials said in a press release shortly after 7 p.m. Tuesday that 'Oprah's road' was accessible to the public, an advisory repeated in a 9:30 p.m. update. But Meidell said further evacuations weren't necessary after 7 p.m. because police had confirmed 'at that point the highway was completely empty of traffic.'
Maui police and the Maui Emergency Management Agency did not immediately return the AP's requests for comment.
'As soon as we heard the tsunami warnings, we contacted local law enforcement and FEMA to ensure the road was opened. Any reports otherwise are false,' a representative for Winfrey wrote in a statement first disseminated to news outlets Tuesday night. The decision to open the road was made quickly 'when the warning was issued to evacuate, working with local officials and Oprah's Ranch,' the representative added in a statement Wednesday.
Cars were escorted in separate caravans that each 'had a lead vehicle and a sweep vehicle to make sure that there weren't any incidents on the mountain road,' Meidell said.
Haleakala Ranch encompasses nearly 30,000 acres of open space from the southern shoreline to Upcountry Maui, according to its website, and has been family-owned and operated since the late 1800s. The private road connects a public roadway with a highway on the island's oceanside.
Some Hawaii residents have long expressed frustration with the large swaths of land that wealthy public figures like Winfrey own on Maui and have advocated against short-term rentals that dot the region and worsen the already low housing supply. The islands have faced a chronic housing shortage only exacerbated in 2023 when a deadly wildfire destroyed most of Lahaina, a town on Maui and the historic former capital of the Hawaiian kingdom. The wildfire was the deadliest in U.S. history in a century that left more than 100 people dead.
Users claimed with no evidence then that Winfrey had hired private firefighters to protect her land before the fires started, and hired security to keep others of her land during the evacuations. Some X users also spread false claims linking Winfrey to the cause of the blaze. Winfrey teamed up with Dwayne Johnson to launch the People's Fund for Maui and committed $10 million to help residents who lost their homes in the wildfires. The fund raised almost $60 million as of April 2024.
In 2019, Winfrey confirmed on X, then Twitter, that county officials were given permission to use the private road immediately after a brush fire started on Maui's southern area. The road ultimately was not used, Maui County spokesperson Chris Sugidono told the AP at the time.
___
Associated Press National Writer Hillel Italie contributed reporting.
___
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
I've moved 28 times in my lifetime. This is the story of a new America
My special talent: I can survey any room in a house and accurately estimate how many cardboard boxes and spools of bubble wrap are needed to efficiently contain its contents. I wish it wasn't a personal point of distinction, but I can't escape it: I've lived in 28 homes in 46 years. In my middle-class midwestern family, two rules reigned: you never questioned going to Catholic Mass on Sundays, and you never asked why we kept moving – the only answer was always the same: 'It's for your dad's job.' And so we followed him, the car-top carrier on our wood-trimmed station wagon bursting with clothing, mix tapes and soccer cleats as our eyes fixed on passing cornfields. Being jostled between addresses became the defining characteristic of my coming-of-age 1990s girlhood. I'm now 46, and I can't seem to stay in one home longer than a handful of years. That same geographical stability I craved as a child has become an emotional confinement. I'm terrified to make an offer on another house; it would signal permanence in a body pulsating with restlessness. I used to think our constant moves were just a quirk of my family – but we were part of something bigger. In the 1970s and 1980s, Americans were on the move. A shifting economy, two-income pressures, and corporate relocations made motion feel like progress. We weren't just packing boxes – we were absorbing a national ethos that told us movement was advancement, even if it left us unmoored. My story started in seventh grade. I was a target for bullies with a pimpled face and thick, frizzy hair. Puberty shot me into a frame like my grandma's – 5ft9in, solid bones, size 10 shoes – so when my parents sat us down on the couch for a 'family meeting' the summer before eighth grade and said we were moving from rural Missouri to suburban Chicago, I was excited to escape the ridicule of the popular boys. Mom was a homemaker and Dad the breadwinner; she didn't put up a fuss about the move. My parents married days after they graduated from Ohio State because Dad had a job offer in Baltimore and Mom couldn't go unless they wed. They never had time for wanderlust, and I now sometimes wonder if she wanted an adventure or loathed it. As I started in my new school, my parents blessed me with prescription-strength face cream and let me throw a party in our basement. I invited all 59 kids in the eighth grade class – branding myself the 'fun new girl'. It worked and soon I found myself singing Soul Asylum lyrics into a hairbrush along with my new besties at a sleepover. Meanwhile, my mom became obsessed with our new neighborhood in Naperville, an idyllic suburb of Chicago. She raved about the riverwalk and every other upper-middle class touch we hadn't experienced previously. I loved it too. I started high school the following year with a large contingent of friends, playing basketball and soccer. Then, the summer before sophomore year: another family meeting. We were moving back to Missouri. I sobbed for weeks, devastated to leave the first life that felt like mine. I still remember looking out the back window of our minivan as my mom blasted Carole King's Tapestry as we headed south on I-55. The cumulative stress of relocating during critical developmental stages can impact kids later in life, according to a 2024 study published by JAMA Psychiatry. People who moved more than once between the ages of 10 and 15 were 61% more likely to experience depression in adulthood. This data wasn't just inked in journals; it lived in me. And like a suitcase full of unresolved attachment issues, at 14 I carried these experiences with cramped hands. It informed my understanding of permanence: that true safety was an illusion, that stability was always conditional, that the only reliable way to cope with discomfort was to disappear from it. The day before senior year started, I walked into the house to my mom frantically packing boxes. After two years of trying desperately to get us back to Naperville, my dad had a new job there and we needed to leave later that day – in time for my brother to start his freshman year of high school in the morning. I can still feel myself hyperventilating between the kitchen table and the bay window, wedging myself metaphorically into that house during an epic meltdown. But, the family motto, though never stated, was clear: keep moving. Between ages 13 and 18, I went to five schools in five years and lived in even more houses. My reality was a microcosm of a broader psychological truth: that instability during formative years can shape how we see ourselves long after the packing tape is ripped off the last box. Other longterm studies have found similar links to lower life satisfaction. Beyond being more prone to depression, a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people who moved frequently as children tended to have lower life satisfaction and poorer psychological well-being as adults. The research, which followed over 7,000 American adults for 10 years, found a direct link between the number of childhood moves and lower reported well-being, even when accounting for other factors like age and education. In young adulthood, my instincts gravitated toward fierce friendships – the chosen family that defined my college years and early 20s. Earning an entry-level wage I expected impermanence in the big city, although while scraping together rent with my friends, my singular dream was a husband, kids, and the white picket fence I never claimed in youth. I was determined to affix myself to a permanent address. I married the first man who asked at age 29. I bought us a condo in 2007, six months before we got divorced and a minute before the infamous 'big short' caused the housing market to burst. Everyone had said real estate was a sure-fire investment for the long term, but living in my one-bedroom marital condo alone felt like PTSD. I eventually saved enough to sell in 2014, bringing money to the closing table just to get out of the 'investment' meant to be a stepping stone to suburbia. By the early 2000s, job transfers and economic instability had made geographic permanence feel almost quaint. Raised on the promise of 'Home Sweet Home,' my generation entered adulthood expecting sanctuary and instead dodged stereotypical landmines of economic precarity and unbalanced cognitive labor. According to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, homebuying rates for Gen X and older millennials have lagged behind previous generations, squeezed today by high interest rates and low desirable inventory. The dual-income household, framed as a pragmatic necessity, has metastasized into a common storyline on a TV series – one where home functions less as a haven and more as a finely-tuned productivity engine, but with an abundance of decorative throw pillows for aesthetics. It's not that the dream of the stable home disappeared – it just started charging an untenable monthly rent. In my mid-30s I faced the unstable market by renting a no-frills, fourth-floor walk-up whose memory still charms. My second husband wooed me away four years later, and this time to the state of nirvana I'd always wanted: the 'forever' home in the suburban cul-de-sac perfectly perched up on that hill. So, we overpaid, and I affixed his kids' artwork to the fridge with magnets that boasted 'Home Sweet Home' and 'family forever'. The marriage wouldn't last. Within three years the 'for sale' sign erected in the front yard would again be a marker that I failed to do the one thing in life I wanted more than anything: to stay. I didn't know how to pack the feeling of loss, so I took it with me after draining my savings account once more for an unfavorable sale to a new family. I inked a deal in 2018 on a condo in downtown Chicago, on the same street of my former favorite apartment. But the pandemic, losing my cat, getting laid off, and miscarrying the one successful pregnancy I ever had all within six months led me to sell the condo I had mortgaged at a sub-3% interest rate so I could lower my expenses. Today I live in a dark, garden-level apartment, contemplating what Sigmund Freud called 'repetition compulsion' – the tendency to unconsciously repeat traumatic events or patterns of behavior from the past even if they are unfulfilling. I seem to be pining for a life I can't materialize. It is my pre-move childhood: the stale smell of the rarely-washed couch blanket we all used, the sound of my friends bouncing a basketball on the driveway, the waft of cigarette smoke from the kitchen when my parents had their friends over for cards. If the walls had veins they'd pulse to the energy of pizza night, intermittent shouts of 'Uno!' and that indescribable chaos when the only thing that outnumbers the dishwasher cycles are the friends and neighbors stepping through the foyer. But every attempt to find this pulls me further away from settling into the present. I can't imagine how to create a happy life for myself without that feeling of family I've been trying to replicate. I've lost tens of thousands of dollars on real estate and even more in self-assurance. My body carries every goodbye out a minivan window more acutely than my conscious mind. If I do emotionally commit again to an address, it might be ripped away. I want to know that true belonging isn't a myth. I often wonder what affixing my restless energy to another permanent address will do to the animal living inside of me – all she knows how to do is advance! advance! advance! What if, like motherhood, I simply missed out on the American dream? Is home ownership another childhood entitlement I need to blow into an imaginary balloon and watch gently float above my open hand? As I face a housing market with low inventory at high prices and outrageous interest rates, I consider the paradox of my packing talent. It's easy for me to stow things away, but I need courage for an internal move – to fully unpack where I am right now and finally just build a life already.
The Independent
7 hours ago
- The Independent
Broken altimeter, ignored warnings: Hearings reveal what went wrong in DC crash that killed 67
Over three days of sometimes contentious hearings this week, the National Transportation Safety Board interrogated Federal Aviation Administration and Army officials about a list of things that went wrong and contributed to a Black Hawk helicopter and a passenger jet colliding over Washington, D.C., killing 67 people. The biggest revelations: The helicopter's altimeter gauge was broken, and controllers warned the FAA years earlier about the dangers that helicopters presented. At one point NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy scolded the FAA for not addressing safety concerns. 'Are you kidding me? Sixty-seven people are dead! How do you explain that? Our bureaucratic process?' she said. 'Fix it. Do better.' Victims of the January crash included a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents and coaches and four union steamfitters from the Washington area. Here is a look at the major takeaways from the hearings about the collision, which alarmed travelers before a string of other crashes and close calls this year added to their worries about flying: The helicopter's altimeter was wrong The helicopter was flying at 278 feet (85 meters) — well above the 200-foot (61-meter) ceiling on that route — when it collided with the airliner. But investigators said the pilots might not have realized that because the barometric altimeter they were relying on was reading 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) lower than the altitude registered by the flight data recorder. The NTSB subsequently found similar discrepancies in the altimeters of three other helicopters from the same unit. An expert with Sikorsky, which makes the Black Hawks, said the one that crashed was an older model that lacked the air data computers that make for more accurate altitude readings in newer versions. Army Chief Warrant Officer Kylene Lewis told the board that an 80- to 100-foot (24- to 30-meter) discrepancy between the different altimeters on a helicopter would not be alarming, because at lower altitudes she would be relying more on the radar altimeter than the barometric altimeter. Plus Army pilots strive to stay within 100 feet (30 meters) of target altitude on flights, so they could still do that even with their altimeters that far off. But Rick Dressler of medevac operator Metro Aviation told the NTSB that imprecision would not fly with his helicopters. When a helicopter route like the one the Black Hawk was flying that night includes an altitude limit, Dressler said, his pilots consider that a hard ceiling. FAA and Army defend actions, shift blame Both tried to deflect responsibility for the crash, but the testimony highlighted plenty of things that might have been done differently. The NTSB's final report will be done next year, but there likely will not be one single cause identified for the crash. 'I think it was a week of reckoning for the FAA and the U.S. Army in this accident,' aviation safety consultant and former crash investigator Jeff Guzzetti said. Army officials said the greater concern is that the FAA approved routes around Ronald Reagan International Airport with separation distances as small as 75 feet (23 meters) between helicopters and planes when planes are landing on a certain runway at Reagan. 'The fact that we have less than 500-foot separation is a concern for me,' said Scott Rosengren, chief engineer in the office that manages the Army's utility helicopters. Army Chief Warrant Officer David Van Vechten said he was surprised the air traffic controller let the helicopter proceed while the airliner was circling to land at Reagan's secondary runway, which is used when traffic for the main runway stacks up and accounts for about 5% of flights. Van Vechten said he was never allowed to fly under a landing plane as the Black Hawk did, but only a handful of the hundreds of times he flew that route involved planes landing on that runway. Other pilots in the unit told crash investigators it was routine to be directed to fly under landing planes, and they believed that was safe if they stuck to the approved route. Frank McIntosh, the head of the FAA's air traffic control organization, said he thinks controllers at Reagan 'were really dependent upon the use of visual separation' to keep traffic moving through the busy airspace. The NTSB said controllers repeatedly said they would just 'make it work.' They sometimes used 'squeeze plays' to land planes with minimal separation. On the night of the crash, a controller twice asked the helicopter pilots whether they had the jet in sight, and the pilots said they did and asked for visual separation approval so they could use their own eyes to maintain distance. Testimony at the hearing raised serious questions about how well the crew could spot the plane while wearing night vision goggles and whether the pilots were even looking in the right spot. The controller acknowledged in an interview that the plane's pilots were never warned when the helicopter was on a collision path, but controllers did not think telling the plane would have made a difference at that point. The plane was descending to land and tried to pull up at the last second after getting a warning in the cockpit, but it was too late. FAA was warned about the dangers of helicopter traffic in D.C. An FAA working group tried to get a warning added to helicopter charts back in 2022 urging pilots to use caution whenever the secondary runway was in use, but the agency refused. The working group said 'helicopter operations are occurring in a proximity that has triggered safety events. These events have been trending in the wrong direction and increasing year over year.' Separately, a different group at the airport discussed moving the helicopter route, but those discussions did not go anywhere. And a manager at a regional radar facility in the area urged the FAA in writing to reduce the number of planes taking off and landing at Reagan because of safety concerns. The NTSB has also said the FAA failed to recognize a troubling history of 85 near misses around Reagan in the three years before the collision, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said 'every sign was there that there was a safety risk and the tower was telling you that.' But after the accident, the FAA transferred managers out of the airport instead of acknowledging that they had been warned. 'What you did is you transferred people out instead of taking ownership over the fact that everybody in FAA in the tower was saying there was a problem,' Homendy said. 'But you guys are pointing out, 'Welp, our bureaucratic process. Somebody should have brought it up at some other symposium.'' ___
The Sun
8 hours ago
- The Sun
The 5 signs your marriage is failing – and how to save it, from a top divorce lawyer
In the UK, around 42% of marriages end in divorce.* Knowing the warning signs while things are still unravelling can make the difference between beating those odds or your relationship coming to an end. 6 "You can learn a lot about keeping things together by watching how they fall apart," says James Sexton, New York divorce lawyer and author of How Not To F**k Up Your Marriage. "I've had hundreds of people sitting across from me telling me very candidly what went wrong in their marriage." Through decades of conversations with divorcing clients, James has identified ways to "reverse-engineer" failing relationships and bring back the joy that first sparked them. Of course, for some married people, he admits divorce can be the best option. "The goal isn't to stay miserably married," he says. "I don't see marriage as an endurance race. "The goal is for marriage to add value to us, to help deepen our connection to ourselves, to the world, to each other, to our family." Here, James shares his biggest predictors that your marriage will fail, and tells you exactly what to do to save it. You've stopped noticing your partner 6 "If I could give one piece of advice to anyone in relationships, it would be two words: pay attention," says James. "It's so easy to stop seeing your partner because they're there all the time, and to stop hearing them because they're always talking around you." When we stop noticing our partners, we don't show them they're appreciated. "Feeling love towards someone is great, but acting towards that person with love is important." Relationship expert shares three tell-tale signs your relationship is falling apart James uses the example of a client who realised her relationship was over when her husband stopped buying her favourite granola, which was only available in one shop. "Every time I ran out, there would just be a new bag," James' client told him, explaining that she felt loved every time she saw it. "Then, one day, the granola ran out. He didn't replace it." How to fix it: Only you know – or should do – the small things your partner loves. Keep doing them to show your other half you always remember them. For James, that means sprinkling cinnamon on his partner's morning coffee. For her, it means sharing a picture with James whenever she lands at the airport after a trip. It could be leaving a thoughtful note in the morning before leaving for work. "This tells someone: 'I still like you, I'm thinking of you.' It's such a low-percentage investment," says James. Plus, it often leads to reciprocity. Criticism is a reflex 6 Criticism makes your partner clam up and get defensive. It can cause any problem to snowball – and that includes constructive criticism. James says: "I'm not saying that when our partner is doing something we think should be changed for their good, or for the good of the relationship, that we shouldn't do something about it." However, being able to see your partner as your own personal cheerleader and a safe space from the daily criticisms of the workplace or general hardship, is how relationships thrive. How to fix it: "Raise the positive," says James. "Try to shift your partner's behaviour or perspective in a way that doesn't feel like criticism." That means reinforcing positive behaviour through compliments, rather than focusing on the negative behaviour you want to see altered. James gives the example that if you prefer your partner freshly shaven, rather than endlessly telling them how much you hate their stubble, wait until they have just shaved and pile on the compliments, avoiding criticism and creating a sense of closeness. You've lost yourself 6 Something James always hears people say when they're getting divorced is: "I lost myself in this relationship, I don't remember who I am any more." When we spend all our time with one person or only act in one role (as a wife and/or a mother), it is easy to lose sight of our own wants and needs. Long-term, this can fuel resentment and complacency. "Part of the fun of another person is the mystery of them," says James. "It's really fun to be interested and interesting." Maintaining a life and identity outside your relationship can help keep this interest alive and build deeper connections. How to fix it: Dedicate time to yourself. "Learn something from happily divorced people – there is time when you're the parent, time when you're a single person, time for all those multitudes inside you. You don't have to give up a relationship to have that." Allow yourself that Saturday once a month to go and do the thing you love. Monogamy has become monotonous 6 You know what you like, and you do it every time – is it any wonder you don't do it that much then? "Even with good intentions, people ruin their own sex lives when they are monogamous," says James. "I'm a fan of monogamy, but I think that people unintentionally make monogamy into monotony." When you figure out what your partner enjoys in the bedroom, things become more "efficient" and sex becomes routine. How to fix it: Switching things up sexually can be tricky when you've already established the script of your relationship. James says that telling your partner outright what you wish you had more of in bed can feel like criticism. Instead, he suggests finding ways to talk about your sex life indirectly. "One of the things I suggest is saying: 'Oh my god! I had a sex dream about you last night,'" says James. And using that as a way to share your fantasy. If your partner doesn't seem on board, this also gives you space to backtrack. "It's a dishonesty, but one with really honest intentions – the intention is deepening connection, sharing our authenticity with our partner in a strategic way." You're not doing relationship maintenance 6 Amid the gestures of goodwill and intimacy chats, James says the strongest marriages also continuously evaluate and address any issues as they arise. Otherwise, you run the risk of letting things reach crisis point before realising a lot of work needs to be done. "Preventative maintenance is everything, it should really be the subtitle for my book," says James. "It's a whole lot easier to keep something good than it is to let it fall apart and then try to fix it. "It's really easy to maintain your weight, it's much harder to gain a load of weight then try to lose it. "Think of it like having the oil changed on your car – it's not sexy, it's not complicated." How to fix it: You can make working on your relationship a conscious practice by checking in with one another on a regular basis, and being curious about what role you can play in improving your relationship. James suggests going on a "walk and talk" regularly with your partner, where you can share things that made you feel loved that week and any issues that arose. "It's kind of a praise sandwich, with some good alongside things to work on," he says.
