Metal-Lee-Solid: From Maui and go back to visit yearly, this is well known among the locals I know and is a semi-common talking point. Tourists put themselves in a lot of danger when vacationing and drunk. A couple of the stories I heard about tourists dying near my house affected me a lot as a kid.
urmyfavoritecustomer: Ah, and I was nearly one of them.
Typical idiot story. Was there with my buddies, woke up early for some reason, still drunk. Rented a paddleboard and had a great time. Got out past the the surf and lay on the board to relax. Opened my eyes. Hour(s) had passed. The island was very very small on the horizon and the current was swiftly sweeping me out further. I think the only thing that saved me was the fact that I like to run and I guess have a decent circulatory system when combined with the adrenaline secreted when a body wants to remain alive. It was an hour before I even saw the scuba diving boat tours. Close call.
TheLowClassics: So as long as you stay less than a week you’re fine?
Iamaexjw: I live on Maui. My mom (lives on mainland) always freaks out reading news reports about all the people who get killed here. Really it’s way overblown. I walk on many of the trails that people have died on before and thought “really…someone fucking fell of this trail? How did they manage that?” It’s not like there are crazy things that just come in and kill you, I think it’s mostly just people who usually don’t go out and adventure much, and go WAY out of their league trying to have an exciting Hawaiian adventure.
BattleHall: So, around 52 people per year? [little back of the napkin…] Hawaii averages over 8 million tourists annually. If we spitball and say that each person spends an average of a week there (some less, some more), then 8 million divided by 52 would give us around 154k full tourist person/years. The CDC places the all causes death by accidental/unintentional injury rate at [42.6 per 100k](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm). If a fair chunk of that is the very elderly, who probably wouldn’t make up a large portion of vacationers, then it sounds like the Hawaiian tourist accidental death rate is probably right in line with the general averages, give or take a bit.
mrbkkt1: It’s cause people do things like this.
https://www.instagram.com/p/rF9cdgQWeP/
For reference:
https://www.instagram.com/p/rF9O9_QWeF/
And far out reference
https://www.instagram.com/p/rF9rMEwWer/
That is why tourists die.. Chasing silly pictures.
gaseouspartdeux: The State and the Counties recently all put on a recurring video of safety in Hawaii covering water (Ocean and river/waterfall), and hiking, and lava viewing now at all the hotel/resorts room tv’s.
Please watch if you go, and obey the posted signs. Lifeguards had to pull out 80 plus tourists, and yes some idiot locals out of the high surf at North Shore in one day last week. Big island last moth pulled out 3 drownings out of the Wailuku river two weeks ago. They were tourists who ignored the signs about the rough undertow currants, and sucked over the falls. Wailuku rive means “river of destruction” in Hawaiian for a reason. It has claimed any tourists, and long time ancient Hawaiians as well.
MlNDequalsBL0WN: Coconuts. If thay fall, you gon’ die.
Super681: Adding to this. I don’t get how more people don’t die. I’ve been to Maui and those senic roads are the width of a car and past that is a cliff. My hair was on end for hours.
Also tourists do some really dumb stuff. There’ll be signs like “no feeding sea turtles” and such. While you’re aloud to get up close, the feeding rule was made due to a loss of fingers I think I heard… As for the trails, at least the ones I went on, make sure the conditions are good and you’re prepared. It’s a well known fact that flash flooding has killed many people on a bunch of them and there’s a lot of straight up dangerous terrain. My uncle lives there and has for many years. He has endless stories of people doing dumb stuff getting hurt and/or dying…
Edit: just wanted to say before someone tried to bash me for it. I know not all trails are deadly and that there’s the fair share of clumsy people, that doesn’t stop unstable ground in some places if you’re not careful, slipping and falling around streams/rivers/waterfalls, flash floods, etc. I highly recommend going hiking as they are absolutely stunning views and adventures. Just make sure you’re ready and careful.
Drainbownick: My best friend was one of those dead tourists. Miss you Matt
MirandaCoyne: When I was in high school, a woman my mother worked with went to Hawaii on vacation. She drowned after getting caught in the undertow not far from the beach.
I went about 10 years later and was wading about knee-high in the surf at the North Shore. Thought I was safe. Nope. The beach has warnings about the undertow. I was knocked over by a wave, sucked under and tossed around. Came up for air and only had enough time to take one big gasp of air before I was knocked down and sucked under again. I thought I was going to die and as I was somersaulting trying to find my footing, I remembered my mom’s co-worker. “So this is what happened,” I thought. I got lucky that day and was able to drag myself out.
No one noticed I was in trouble, either. Not even my companion. I hadn’t been drinking, either. I was totally sober, and it was mid-day.
Knee-high water, people. It’s still dangerous. When you’re on the North Shore, or any beach for that matter, heed the warnings!
sizl: The morning of our helicopter tour in Maui I made the mistake of looking up helicopter accidents and found out I was using the same company that crashed a killed a whole family and the pilot a few months prior.
I decided not to cancel because fuck it. I can just as well die in that long add plane ride home. Every bit of turbulence felt like my last breath that day.
WhatthehuckS: Can confirm.
I once performed CPR on a older man who went unresponsive during a catamaran/snorkeling trip on Maui. I was on vacation family and friends, me and a friend along with the person family did CPR for a good 30 min until the CG arrived. We were a good ways from the docks when this all happened. It was a sad situation because his family was there, along with a boat full of many other families and children. But the bright spot is that it was a gorgeous area to have your final breaths.
fonotater: I’m from Hawaii and every time friends or family visit they want to go on some insane hike in an area that is closed because of weather or because it’s flat out dangerous. I’m like “Alright brah but I swear to god if I end up being interviewed on the news later I’m gonna be pissed.”
No local wants to be that cousin.
RegionalChaos: Went to Hawaii once, it was great. My wife stepped on a sea urchin and took a spine in her foot. Incredibly painful for her and a local had something, Vinegar maybe, handy that he treated it with and she got some relief from that. When we were boarding our plane home, about 1/4 of the people there were on crutches, had a sling, or some other bandage. No joke.
dnph: Some of these are old folks who finally made it to Hawaii. They end up having a blissful heart attack while face down over a reef.
ld43233: I figured it’d be one a day considering the amount of booze vacationers drink.
HawaiiSunshine: A lot of people come to Hawaii expecting manufactured safe fun, like Disneyland. But these islands are a Wild place.
Axeslinger0u812: Yeah. They used to have their own measurement for waves. Hawaiian size, which was also used in Australia and some of Africa – “A possible local practice of taking measurements “from the back” of the wave, i.e., from mean sea level (in technical terms, of measuring not the “peak-to-peak amplitude” of the wave or the height of the wave’s face, the latter of which is increased by the wave’s drawing water from in front of it as it breaks, but rather the wave’s “semi-amplitude” or “peak amplitude”), or from wave buoy readings”
There are other explanations, but this was what I grew up with while living and surfing there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_scale
Edit: TL;DR – “Hawaiian size” when being told the local surf report, was twice the size of what it was measured at most other places. 1-3 feet Hawaiian size was 2-6 feet for others.
princess-alison-: Ironically, I’m leaving to Maui in about 4 hours. When I was 8, I had been swept into the ocean about 100 yards just with my boogie board. It wasn’t long before my dad came rushing after me once I yelled for help. He then remembered in a newspaper article he read awhile back to swim either to the right or left to get back to the shore. NEVER swim directly towards the current, it will only push you back farther and that’s how most drown!
The same week, a kid had lost his sandal at the 7 Sacred Pools in Maui and was swept away into the ocean with his father that tried to save him.
Please be careful while vacationing. This can happen to anyone anytime anywhere.
ViperZeroOne: Not too surprising. Most tourist destinations see tourist deaths rather frequently. Take Disneyland, for example. Their park staff is fully trained to quickly respond to medical emergencies and remove them from the public eye as fast as possible. The training wouldn’t be so extensive if the demand wasn’t there.
Abba_Fiskbullar: Sounds like Yosemite. Between the rock climbers and the back country hikers and summer lightning storms that place is a death trap.
RichardCabezo: Considering how many tourists visit Hawaii, this seems like a reasonable/normal amount. One of those statistics that is totally without merit.
illthrowawaysomeday: Tourists get very gung-ho when it comes to a place they will only visit once most likely. They think they HAVE to do something, no matter what the risk.
My manager insists on hiking the haiku stairs this upcoming spring on his first visit, and despite 5 hawaiians at work telling him that he will most likely get a steep fine, and could possibly get hurt/go missing, he laughs and ignores us all. He obviously knows much better than us who have actually lived there.
Same thing with out of the way beaches with no lifeguards, and most people have never swam in the ocean.
DuntadaMan: Remember, pineapples do not grow in trees. They grow up from the ground.
If you see something that looks exactly like a pineapple in a tree it WILL FUCKING KILL YOU. Don’t eat it.
Honestly it’s like the whole damn island group is evolved to kill drunk tourists.