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Even as the threat of a tsunami swamping Hawaii had passed on Wednesday, social media posts were still circulating claims that Oprah Winfrey had refused immediate access to a private road that would allow residents a shorter evacuation route.
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 road and refused to allow public access for residents trying to reach higher ground
Fact: This is false. Despite being commonly known as “Oprah’s road”, the portion of Kealakapu Road is privately owned – but not by Winfrey. The road belongs to Haleakalā 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’s oceanside.
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, Haleakalā Ranch’s president Scott Meidell said.
The decision to open the road to the public is principally up to the landowner, Winfrey’s representative noted. Meidell said Haleakalā Ranch “had conversations with Ms Winfrey’s land management staff during this process. So, they’re consulted to be sure.”
Haleakalā 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.
Maui County officials said in a press release shortly after 7pm Tuesday that “Oprah’s road” was accessible to the public, an advisory repeated in a 9.30pm update. But Meidell said further evacuations weren’t necessary after 7pm 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 Associated Press’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.
Oprah doesn’t own Kealakapu Road – so why does this false claim keep resurfacing?
Some Hawaii 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.
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 left more than 100 people dead.
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.
Winfrey teamed up with Dwayne Johnson to launch the People’s 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.
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’s southern area. The road ultimately was not used, Maui County spokesperson Chris Sugidono said at the time.
