Fact check: Oprah Winfrey didn’t refuse access to private road amid Maui tsunami warning

Even after the tsunami threat to Hawaii subsided on Wednesday, social media continued to circulate claims that Oprah Winfrey had denied residents immediate access to a private road offering a quicker evacuation route.

The warnings came after one of the century’s strongest earthquakes—an 8.8 magnitude tremor off a Russian peninsula—that triggered tsunami alerts across much of the Pacific. Meanwhile, posts on X and TikTok claimed that Winfrey either refused or delayed opening her private road 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 private road and refused to allow public access for residents trying to reach higher ground, only relenting following public pressure.

FACT: This is false. Despite being commonly known as “Oprah's road,” the portion of Kealakapu Road is privately owned — but not by Winfrey. It belongs to Haleakala Ranch, which also owns the land surrounding the road, its president Scott Meidell told The Associated Press. Winfrey has an easement agreement with the ranch, which allows her to use and make certain improvements to the road, her representative told the AP in a statement. Winfrey has paved the road as part of the agreement, Meidell said.

The decision to open the road to the public is principally up to the landowner, Winfrey's representative noted. Meidell said Haleakala Ranch “had conversations with Ms. Winfrey’s land management staff during this process. So, they’re consulted to be sure.”

Haleakala Ranch contacted the local fire department and the Maui Emergency Management Agency just after 3 p.m. local time, shortly after the tsunami warning went into effect, Meidell said. The road was made accessible shortly after 5 p.m., 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 7 p.m.

Maui County officials said in a press release shortly after 7 p.m. Tuesday that “Oprah’s road” was accessible to the public, an advisory repeated in a 9:30 p.m. update. But Meidell said further evacuations weren't necessary after 7 p.m. 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 AP'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.

Haleakala Ranch encompasses nearly 30,000 acres of open space from the southern shoreline to Upcountry Maui, according to its website, and 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.

Some Hawaii residents have long expressed frustration with the large swaths of land that wealthy public figures like 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 was the deadliest in U.S. history in a century that left more than 100 people dead.

Users claimed with no evidence then that Winfrey had hired private firefighters to protect her land before the fires started, and hired security to keep others of 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 $10 million to help residents who lost their homes in the wildfires. The fund raised almost $60 million as of April 2024.

In 2019, Winfrey confirmed on X, then 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 told the AP at the time.