{"id":33940,"date":"2025-07-31T02:47:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T02:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/33940\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T02:47:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T02:47:08","slug":"no-oprah-winfrey-didnt-block-access-to-a-road-in-hawaii-amid-tsunami-warning-evacuations-oprah-winfrey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/33940\/","title":{"rendered":"No, Oprah Winfrey didn\u2019t block access to a road in Hawaii amid tsunami warning evacuations | Oprah Winfrey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even as the threat of a tsunami swamping Hawaii had passed on Wednesday, social media posts were still circulating claims that Oprah Winfrey<\/a> had refused immediate access to a private road that would allow residents a shorter evacuation route.<\/p>\n

The warnings followed one of the century\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a closer look at the facts.<\/p>\n

Claim: Winfrey owns the road and refused to allow public access for residents trying to reach higher ground<\/p>\n

Fact: This is false. Despite being commonly known as \u201cOprah\u2019s road\u201d, the portion of Kealakapu Road is privately owned \u2013 but not by Winfrey. The road belongs to Haleakal\u0101 Ranch, a 30,000 acre property spanning the southern shoreline to Upcountry Maui, which has been family-owned and operated since the late 1800s. The private road connects a public roadway with a highway on the island\u2019s oceanside.<\/p>\n

Winfrey has an easement agreement with the ranch, which allows her to use and make certain improvements to the road, her representative said in a statement. Winfrey has paved the road as part of the agreement, Haleakal\u0101 Ranch\u2019s president Scott Meidell said.<\/p>\n

The decision to open the road to the public is principally up to the landowner, Winfrey\u2019s representative noted. Meidell said Haleakal\u0101 Ranch \u201chad conversations with Ms Winfrey\u2019s land management staff during this process. So, they\u2019re consulted to be sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waves slam into a seawall off Waikiki beach in Honolulu, Hawaii on Wednesday after authorities downgraded earlier tsunami warnings. Photograph: Marco Garcia\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Haleakal\u0101 Ranch contacted the local fire department and the Maui Emergency Management Agency just after 3pm local time, shortly after the tsunami warning went into effect, Meidell said. The road was made accessible shortly after 5pm, 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 7pm.<\/p>\n

Maui County officials said in a press release shortly after 7pm Tuesday that \u201cOprah\u2019s road\u201d was accessible to the public, an advisory repeated in a 9.30pm update. But Meidell said further evacuations weren\u2019t necessary after 7pm because police had confirmed \u201cat that point the highway was completely empty of traffic\u201d.<\/p>\n

Maui police and the Maui Emergency Management Agency did not immediately return the Associated Press\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs 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,\u201d a representative for Winfrey wrote in a statement first disseminated to news outlets Tuesday night. The decision to open the road was made quickly \u201cwhen the warning was issued to evacuate, working with local officials and Oprah\u2019s Ranch\u201d, the representative added in a statement Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Cars were escorted in separate caravans that each \u201chad a lead vehicle and a sweep vehicle to make sure that there weren\u2019t any incidents on the mountain road\u201d. Meidell said.<\/p>\n

Oprah doesn\u2019t own Kealakapu Road \u2013 so why does this false claim keep resurfacing?<\/p>\n

Some Hawaii<\/a> residents have long expressed frustration with the large swaths of land wealthy public figures such as Winfrey own on Maui and have advocated against short-term rentals that dot the region and worsen the already low housing supply.<\/p>\n

The islands have faced a chronic housing shortage only exacerbated in 2023 when a deadly wildfire destroyed most of Lahaina,<\/a> a town on Maui and the historic former capital of the Hawaiian kingdom. The wildfire left more than 100 people dead.<\/p>\n

Burned structures and cars in Lahaina, Hawaii, two months after a devastating wildfire on 9 October 2023. Photograph: Mario Tama\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

At the time, social media users claimed with no evidence that Winfrey had hired private firefighters to protect her land before the fires started, and hired security to keep others off her land during the evacuations. Some X users also spread false claims linking Winfrey to the cause of the blaze.<\/p>\n

Winfrey teamed up with Dwayne Johnson to launch the People\u2019s Fund for Maui and committed $10m to help residents who lost their homes in the wildfires. The fund raised almost $60m as of April 2024.<\/p>\n

In 2019, Winfrey confirmed on X, then known as Twitter, that county officials were given permission to use the private road immediately after a brush fire started on Maui\u2019s southern area. The road ultimately was not used, Maui County spokesperson Chris Sugidono said at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even as the threat of a tsunami swamping Hawaii had passed on Wednesday, social media posts were still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-33940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}