I don't think it was ever intended or designed to hold up in a natural disaster situation in a populated area though. Every demo or example from Apple involves being hiking out in the middle of nowhere and having a personal emergency.
Absolutely, I'm not saying it can't ever work for anyone and don't bother trying if you're about to die I'm just saying Apple has never even implied the system is intended to hold up for large numbers of people in natural disaster scenarios and such a system will look very different than what they are doing. One user (or even dozens) using the service in Maui making it to a 9to5mac article is orthogonal to that, as cool as it is.
T-Mobile's plan to work with the Starlink satellites directly is a little closer in design to the question but even that is still just intended for non-populated areas. More than "how many satellites" the actual way the system works needs to be drastically different to get large numbers connected in a usable way.
