Edited video distorts Hawaii governor's comments on fire-affected land

"Governor Green wants to turn Lahaina Maui into state lands. All planned for smart city," says an August 14, 2023 Facebook post.

The post includes a clip in which the governor says: "I'm already thinking about ways for the state to acquire that land, so that we can put it into workforce housing."

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Screenshot of a Facebook post taken August 18, 2023

A similar post sharing the footage on Twitter, which is being rebranded as "X," says: "Just a reminder: On January 3rd, 2023, Maui announced plans to become one of the first American 'Smart City / 15-minute City.'"

The claim has circulated elsewhere on Instagram, TikTok and Rumble.

Blazes decimated the historic seaside town of Lahaina on the island of Maui in early August, killing more than 110 people -- the deadliest US wildfires in more than a century. Authorities are still probing the cause of the disaster that reduced homes and businesses to ashes, but The Washington Post and other US media have reported that fallen power lines may have triggered the first flames.

Claims suggesting the government is attempting to take residents' land and create a "smart city" are baseless, and the clip shared as evidence is deceptively edited.

The video comes from an interview Green gave to local news outlet KHON2 on August 13 (archived here). In it, the Democrat said he was looking for ways the state could buy land in Lahaina to preserve it for local residents.

Here are the governor's full remarks, with the part shared online in bold:

"I’m already thinking about ways for the state to acquire that land, so that we can put it into workforce housing, to put it back into families or to make it open spaces in perpetuity as a memorial to people who were lost. We want this to be something that we remember, after the pain passes, as a magic place. And Lahaina will rebuild. The tragedy right now is the loss of life. The buildings can be rebuilt over time; even the Banyan tree may survive." 

Maui landowners displaced by the wildfires have expressed concerns about developers approaching them with offers to buy their properties. The Hawaii Association of Realtors issued a warning urging residents to be cautious of potentially predatory or fraudulent real estate practices (archived here).

Green has repeatedly spoken about the state preserving land for locals. He did not mention smart cities, which "use information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve the ways they operate," according to National Grid, an energy company operating in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Hawaii government is exploring a "moratorium on any sales of properties that have been damaged or destroyed," Green said at an August 14 press conference.

"We will also invest state resources to preserve and protect this land for our people, not for any development, for our people locally," he said.

No Maui 'smart city' plans

AFP has previously debunked claims that the Hawaii wildfires were set intentionally to create smart cities.

Some of the posts reference a mini-track (archived here) at the January 2023 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) titled "Smart and Connected Cities and Communities." But while the summit was hosted on Maui, none of the academic papers were about the island, instead focusing on places such as Costa Rica, Singapore and major global cities.

"Our conference isn't 'a smart city conference to turn Maui into an entire smart island,'" Thayanan Phuaphanthong, HICSS program coordinator, previously told AFP.

Matti Rossi, a professor of information systems at Finland's Aalto University who presented a paper at the conference, confirmed in an August 16 email that "there was no discussion of Maui smart city."

AFP has debunked other claims about the Hawaii wildfires here.