WAILUKU >> Hawaiian Electric Co. is pushing back on allegations that it has compromised evidence, and said characterizations that it has admitted to starting the deadly Lahaina fire are “inaccurate and misleading.”
Facing a flurry of civil lawsuits and accusations of wrongdoing from fire victims and Maui County, the 131-year-old utility shot back at national media reports that its workers removed evidence before a U.S. Department of Justice fire investigation team arrived to begin a probe into the cause and origin of the Lahaina fire.
And in a statement Tuesday to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, the company further rebutted assertions by an attorney for the county, Richard Fried Jr., who said Hawaiian Electric officials have admitted to sparking the blaze that killed at least 115 people, destroyed most of Lahaina town, and displaced over 4,300 people.
On Sunday, Hawaiian Electric released a statement that a fire on the morning of Aug. 8 “appears to have been caused by power lines that fell in high winds.” But the company faulted county firefighters for declaring the blaze contained and leaving the scene, only to have what the utility is calling a second wildfire break out and level Lahaina.
Maui County officials have said there was a flare-up of the morning fire.
The company’s Sunday statement said its power lines in West Maui had been deenergized for more than six hours when a second blaze started.
Fried wrote Tuesday that Hawaiian Electric “admitted to starting the Lahaina Fire on August 8th.”
“In its recent release, issued Sunday night before the markets opened, Hawaiian Electric appears to have suggested there could be a possible second ignition source in the afternoon of August 8th without providing any supporting information,” said Fried. “The investor-owned utility also appears to blame the very firefighters who risked their lives trying to stop the fire that the utility caused.”
Fried said Maui’s firefighters responded quickly to “Hawaiian Electric’s fire” and fought and tended to the blaze for about eight hours, achieving 100% containment by “pouring over 20,000 gallons of water on the area of origin.”
“To the extent the Hawaiian Electric fire flared up in the afternoon due to high winds, that is not the fault of the dedicated firefighters or Maui County,” Fried wrote.
Darren Pai, a Hawaiian Electric spokesperson, said in the statement Tuesday, “A fire at 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 8 appears to have been caused by power lines that fell in high winds. The Maui County Fire Department responded to this fire, reported at 9 a.m. that it was ‘100% contained,’ left the scene and later declared that it had been ‘extinguished.’ If that fire was extinguished, it couldn’t have been the same devastating afternoon fire that burned through Lahaina.”
The utility company also disputed an Aug. 24 Washington Post report that its removal of damaged power poles and other equipment “potentially (affected) evidence that is part of an official investigation into how the blaze ignited.”
Pai said the company has taken “significant steps to preserve all company equipment that was located within the suspected area of origin.”
Hawaiian Electric officials, he said, documented, photographed and secured “such materials.”
The area had not been cordoned off by government officials in the days immediately after the fire, said Pai.
Photographs included in national media reports, including the Washington Post, show that reporters “and perhaps others” were allowed to enter the suspected area of origin, he said.
“Hawaiian Electric took steps to ensure evidence was preserved. Hawaiian Electric has worked closely with the Maui Department of Fire and Public Safety, the ATF, and the attorneys who represent plaintiffs in various lawsuits to allow all interested parties to view the evidence where it is currently secured,” Pai said in the statement. “Hawaiian Electric will continue to take reasonable and necessary steps to preserve any additional relevant evidence.”
Jason R. Chudy, spokesperson for the Seattle Field Division of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told the Star-Advertiser, “It would be inappropriate for us to comment on something that happened before our investigators arrived on island, and further we will not comment on an open investigation.”
Chudy said the bureau’s National Response Team members have left Maui, but that “does not mean our investigative work is done. We will be compiling and analyzing what we gathered/learned in the coming weeks.
“We will provide Maui Fire Department the summarized information from the NRT and the department will include this in their own origin and cause report,” said Chudy. “We also stand by to support Maui if needed in the future, particularly with our special agents and staff from our Honolulu field office.”
MFD said it is continuing its investigation with the help of evidence gathered by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Maui Fire Chief Bradford Ventura told the Star-Advertiser on Tuesday that firefighters reached out to the ATF “to support our fire investigation.”
“We have not put out our final cause and determination,” he said.
Maui County officials told the Star-Advertiser on Tuesday that so far no county employee has been interviewed as part of either state or federal investigations.
The DOJ fire investigation team that arrived on Maui on Aug. 17 included one electrical engineer from the ATF Fire Research Laboratory, two certified fire investigators, a CFI candidate from the Honolulu Field Office, and one arson and explosives group supervisor from the Seattle Field Division.
ATF is the federal agency primarily responsible for administering and enforcing the criminal and regulatory provisions of federal laws pertaining to destructive devices like bombs, explosives and arson.
“The evidence will determine whether it’s incendiary in nature — human started, started by another cause — i.e. accidental, or we can’t determine what started it (undetermined),” said Chudy. “Even if a fire is human started it does not mean it is an arson — people accidentally start fires all the time.”
Over the past roughly 40 years, ATF has developed “scientifically proven investigative capabilities, expertise” and resources that have positioned the agency as the nation’s primary source for explosives and fire investigative knowledge and assistance, he said.
State Attorney General Anne E. Lopez is conducting a separate investigation into the state and county response to the deadliest disaster since statehood.
Gov. Josh Green told reporters Monday that Lopez recently spent time on Maui as part of her probe, which includes the hiring of an independent, third-party investigator.
It is up to Lopez whether to open civil or criminal proceedings with evidence she gathers during her investigation, Green has said.
“We’re all assessing what we could have done better. In this particular case, my early assessment is the complex nature of the wind combined with fire compounded the disaster. There is little doubt that there is always human decisions that can be made better, but we’ve not seen that kind of circumstance,” said Green. “We anticipate that we’ll have lots of findings that will show us where we fell down and where we rescued people.”
He noted that the county and Hawaiian Electric continue to communicate with him and state officials despite their legal battle.
“Everyone in a circumstance like this … they (county and Hawaiian Electric officials) are also traumatized … and so they don’t know what to say and when to say it,” said Green. “They know that they will have to work with our attorney general. The AG is doing her investigation separate from what HECO or the … county produces.”
Green said the state feels “we have to be a neutral party,” and he expects the findings of the attorney general’s investigation “to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb.”
“The early sense is, we’ve all heard different parts of this story, the fire was complex, it was in many parts of the county,” said Green. “But we’ll go over the timetable; we’ll go over what could have been done. We’re reviewing every policy you can imagine.”
Among the criticisms leveled against county officials in the wake of the blaze is that the Maui Emergency Management Agency did not use emergency warning sirens to alert residents, saying they are intended for use during tsunamis and not wildfires.
Green acknowledged that moving forward, it would be “impossible” to not use warning sirens for wildfires — as was done for a Kaanapali brush fire Sunday.
