Who decided what no one decided?
No One Is in Charge
How American Institutions Escape Accountability
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From the public record: a town whose 80 warning sirens stayed silent while it burned down. A file cabinet full of a husband’s records, and a webpage that would accept none of them. Patients certified as dying, year after year, who were not. A nurse indicted for an error made through an override practice the hospital had normalized. In each, authority was exercised, and no one could be found to answer for it. No One Is in Charge follows the record — court filings, inspection reports, settlements, government investigations — until the pattern becomes plain: the decision remains, the decision-maker is gone, and accountability has gone with them. Not through corruption. Through the way institutions are built.
Contents
- 1Crossing the T’s
- 2No Way Out
- 3The Glass House
- 4The Walking Trees
- 5The Box Bet
- 6Marriage of Convenience
- 7All Systems Faux
- 8Wait and See
- 9Wizard of Cause
- 10Imminently Dying Forever
- 11Ink on Paper
- 12Good as Gold
- 13Very, Very Low
- 14You Already Know
- 15Let It Be
- 16Price of Admission
- 17Trojan Horse Show
- 18Fox and Hen
- 19Haste Made Waste
- 20A Serious Dilemma
- 21Fine Tooth Comb
- 22For the Record
Chapter 1
Crossing the T’s
Lahaina, Maui, August 8, 2023. Front Street runs along the harbor with wooden storefronts facing moored boats, a single banyan tree covering most of a block. Above town, the hillsides are painted with chest-high grass cured pale by a rainless summer, grown up to the feet of fence lines and the back walls of houses. Utility poles carry distribution lines across the slopes. Wind comes down from the West Maui Mountains at 60 to 80 miles an hour and lays the dry grass flat. At 6:34 a.m., a broken power line off Lahainaluna Road drops sparks into the dry grass.
By 6:37 the fire covers three acres near Lahaina Intermediate School. Engines climb up the road; firefighters drag hose down into the grass. Water hits the flame and knocks it flat, soaking the black ground behind it, steam rising off the ash. A bulldozer drops its blade and cuts a strip of bare dirt around the perimeter; along the far edge the Lahaina Bypass Road holds the line. By 9:00 a.m. the fire is declared 100 percent contained. The crew walks the burn, turning the wet ash with their boots, then rolls the hoses, loads the trucks, and leaves the scene at 2:18 p.m.