As search and recovery operations continue in Lahaina, a town virtually destroyed by wind-propelled wildfire, questions swirl: Why was the blaze so intense, so difficult to control? Might the devastation have been predicted, or prevented?
The fires that overwhelmed Lahaina were unprecedented, and unanticipated — but they might have been predicted, had the risks caused by changing environmental conditions and climate change been more understood, and treated proactively. To accept this reality is not to cast blame — but to soberly note that the time for dithering over increased risks to human life and the future health of Hawaii’s environment has passed.
Environment-related conditions had everything to do with the Lahaina fire — but that is not to say the conditions were “natural.” Among the factors:
>> Dry grasslands and scrub — not Maui’s endemic ground cover, but invasive species that filled in lands denuded by plantation agriculture and livestock. Invasive grasses, if allowed to dominate the landscape, build fire risk: Even if cut back, they grow back more thickly after a rainfall. During a drought such as Maui is experiencing, they are dry as tinder.
>> Drier conditions, exacerbated by global warming patterns. Both drought and fire have steadily become more common — and more extreme — throughout Hawaii and the Pacific in recent years, with an increasing number of consecutive dry days when fire risk is higher.
>> The conversion of lands once cultivated with terraces of taro and thick groves of coconut and banana, as encountered by the earliest Western ships landing at Lahaina. These uses, along with a royal pond irrigated by highland rainfall, once held water and reduced fire risks around the coastal settlement, before its transformation into a Westernized whaling village and center for sugarcane cultivation.
>> Excessively high winds. While Lahaina is typically sunbaked in the mornings and buffeted by dry winds pushing over the mauka highlands in the afternoon, the conditions on Aug. 8 were unprecedented. Sustained, extreme winds pushed the Lahaina fire from threatening to devastating; firefighters tried, and failed, to hold the fire back again and again, as the gusts caused sparks to leap defenses, including roads that under less-extreme conditions would have served as firebreaks.
>> Unpredictable, extreme weather. The convergence of Hurricane Dora, south of Maui, with a high pressure system to the north led to high winds, while severe drought on Maui exacerbated the fire risk. The conflagration that developed was unprecedented — but not unpredictable. Scientists have warned for years that the increased dangers precipitated by a warming land and sea are upon us.
Hawaii must prepare for more of these new weather patterns and extreme weather events as global warming, which includes warming of the ocean itself, shifts currents, pressure systems, winds and storm trajectories.
The state’s emergency agencies and the community players involved must no longer calculate risk versus reward through a pre-climate change, pre-Lahaina fire lens. Several protections, once dismissed or delayed, could now “pencil out”:
>> Management of open lands to reduce or eliminate swaths of fire-friendly, invasive grasses. Here, both landowners and the state, particularly the Department of Land and Natural Resources, must work together to put protective measures into effect.
>> Increasing fire prevention by expanding buffers and fire breaks between flammable areas and the built environment, with attention to the hazards of power lines. More must be done to separate power lines from flammable ground cover, and to ensure power lines aren’t vulnerable to toppling and sparking. Undergrounding lines in high-risk areas, one preventive tool, must now be considered more carefully.
>> Improvement and expansion of evacuation routes, warning methods and emergency response, including more investment in firefighter training and equipment.
>> Establishing water reserves in proximity to endangered areas, with careful stewardship. Here, actions such as establishing irrigated, canoe-plant agriculture and maintaining ponds or wetlands, dismissed as anachronistic in the past, could reduce risk and create water reserves for an emergency.
>> Adapting construction codes to address fire’s looming threat. This should also include options such as solar power capability to make communities more resilient and less reliant on a “grid” power structure.
These protective measures are by no means solely a Maui concern, and lessons learned about fire hazards, land management and disaster preparedness benefit all of Hawaii. It’s helpful that at present, a key source of assistance exists for Maui, and Hawaii, that has not previously been available: The federal Inflation Reduction Act, which is funding infrastructure projects that build climate resilience. This provides an incentive, and support, for urgent rebuilding efforts that take Hawaii’s new normal into account.
