After a massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake rattled off the coast of Russia on Tuesday, officials in Hawaii warned residents a tsunami with potentially dangerous levels of inundation might be on the way.
When the National Weather Service updated Hawaii’s tsunami watch to a tsunami warning, local officials called for evacuations of at-risk coastal communities.
If you were to believe some posts on social media, the billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey — who lives in Maui part-time — was accused of callously refusing to let evacuees use her private road to shorten their travel time.
But it’s typically a bad idea to believe what you see on social media.
According to an Associated Press fact check, the story about Winfrey’s callous road hogging is false.
While a portion of Kealakapu Road — sometimes called “Oprah’s road” locally — is private, the road was opened to those evacuating the tsunami zones.
Not only was the road open, but it isn’t even owned by Winfrey. According to the AP, the road is owned by Haleakala Ranch, which also owns the land surrounding the road.
Winfrey has an easement agreement with the ranch allowing her to use and make certain improvements to the road, one of her representatives told the AP.
She has reportedly paved the road as part of the agreement, according to Scott Meidell, the ranch’s president.
Winfrey’s spokespeople said it was the landowners who ultimately had to decide whether or not to open the private road to those evacuating the coasts. Meidell said ranch officials “had conversations with Ms. Winfrey’s land management staff” when the decision about the road was being made.
The ranch contacted the local fire department and the Maui Emergency Management Agency just after 3 p.m. local time, which was shortly after the tsunami warning was issued by the NWS.
Around two hours later, the road was opened to evacuees, and ranch personnel assisted in the evacuation of between 150 to 200 vehicles until the last cars were escorted along the mountainous road around 7pm local time.
It’s unclear where the rumors started that Winfrey was refusing access to the road. On Tuesday — the same day the warning was issued — Maui County officials issued a press release acknowledging that the road was opened to the public.
One X account shared a video of a man in a car filming a line of what appear to be evacuees. The individual recording the video asks for Winfrey to “save us” and complains about how much land the celebrity owns in Maui.
The user who shared the video included a caption repeating the rumor that Winfrey had closed the road, and said, “If true, this is a massive scandal for the billionaire that will ruin her reputation forever.”
While the post now has a reader’s context box correcting the record, there are still plenty of commenters criticizing Winfrey, including one who called her a “monster” and another wondering why she’s even allowed to “own an entire road,” which she does not.
Meidell said there were no cars trying to use the road after 7 p.m., so keeping it open past that time was not necessary.
“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 spokesperson for Winfrey said in a statement sent to the press on Tuesday evening.
