Maui County hasn’t built any new fire stations on Maui or significantly increased its staffing of firefighters on the island in 20 years.

During that time, however, the population has grown substantially and firefighting has become more challenging, especially in leeward West Maui, where at least 115 died in a massive wind-driven wildfire that destroyed the historic center of Lahaina.

“Maui County fire protection is definitely understaffed,” said Bobby Lee, president of the Hawaii Firefighters Association.

Lee, a former Honolulu and Big Island firefighter for 36 years, said the Maui Fire Department has roughly 200 firefighters working on Maui island. Ordinarily, he said, about 60 to 65 are working at any given time out of the island’s 10 fire stations, including one in Lahaina and a smaller one in Napili. Maui firefighters are responsible for covering Hawaii’s second largest island, at over 730 square miles.

Some back-of-the-envelope math, Lee said, shows that there are something like 11 square miles for every firefighter on Maui, compared to less than 2 square miles for every Honolulu Fire Department firefighter on Oahu.

“Maui clearly can use some help,” he said.

That goes for West Maui, where two stations with about 15 firefighters on duty at any one time covers nearly 100 square miles that stretches on either side of Kapalua to the north and Olowalu to the south. The closest backup fire station is at least 30 minutes away.

It’s a region where the population has experienced 50% growth since 2000 — from about 18,000 to 28,000, according to Maui County figures — and where the daily tourist population outnumbers the residents.

Flammable grasslands

Firefighting in West Maui became even more challenging after Lahaina’s Pioneer Mill closed in 1999. Before that time, the slopes above Lahaina and surrounding areas were covered with well-maintained fields of sugar cane, providing a bright green buffer for the populated areas on the coast.

But after the mill shut down, the hills were allowed to turn fallow and brown. An invasion of nonnative grasses and shrubs took over and proved highly flammable during the dry season.

“It became a savanna of tropical grassland primed to burn,” said Clay Trauernicht, a fire scientist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Trauernicht said that when the plantation was active, company personnel would maintain roads and act in a supporting role during a fire. When firefighters would show up, plantation workers would be there to open gates and assist with water infrastructure and equipment.

“Now, it all falls on the fire department’s shoulders,” he said.

Trauernicht said Hawaii firefighters working several major fires in recent years have told him they’ve never seen flames spread as fast as they are now, consuming landscapes covered by the flammable nonnative grasses.

It’s a problem across the state with nonnative species covering nearly a quarter of Hawaii’s total land area. With the growing effects of climate change, he said, fire-prone conditions are becoming more common and making containment of wildfires much harder.

Both the frequency and size of the wildland fires have increased dramatically over the years, often stretching firefighting budgets to their limits, Trauernicht said.

Risky conditions

Nearly a decade ago, the Hawai‘i Wildfire Management Organization issued a wildfire mitigation plan that warned that Lahaina was among Maui’s most fire-prone areas, based on factors such as its proximity to grasslands, steep terrain and frequent high winds.

The 2020 Maui County Hazard Mitigation Plan Update depicts Lahaina and its buildings as occupying a “high” wildfire risk area, while describing West Maui’s wildfire chances as “highly likely.” The plan also identified the region as having a greater than 90% annual chance of fire, a percentage higher than any other place in the county.

“Dry, windy conditions with an accumulation of vegetative fuel can create conditions for a fire that spreads quickly,” the report says.

Uilani Kapu knows those conditions well. In 2018 fierce down-slope winds associated with Hurricane Lane helped push a huge wildfire near her home in the Kaua‘ula Valley above Lahaina. The blaze ended up destroying 21 homes, damaging 30 vehicles and charring 2,000 acres.

Kapu’s home survived but she was left angry. At a post-fire meeting with county officials at the Lahainaluna High School cafeteria, Kapu yelled at then-Mayor Alan Arakawa and his staff about the lack of a brush abatement program.

In an interview last week, she said she’s never seen any evidence that such an abatement program was ever started and maintained, and that it’s clear that parched and overgrown vacant land helped fuel the Aug. 8 firestorm.

Kapu and her husband, Ke‘eaumoku Kapu, ran the Na ‘Aikane o Maui Cultural Center in Lahaina, which burned to the ground that day.

As she was trying to evacuate Aug. 8, she said she drove past exhausted firefighters spitting and gasping for air.

“They need more assistance,” she said of the Lahaina fire crews. “And landowners need to be held accountable for their properties with their dry, overgrown brush.”

Warnings of disaster

Joe Pluta and Rick Nava both lost their Lahaina homes that night. Both barely escaped the fast-moving flames that destroyed more than 2,200 structures and caused an estimated $5.6 billion in damage.

Both men for years warned of a disaster like this one and repeatedly urged Maui’s politicians to make public safety a priority and to beef up police, fire and other services for the remote and vulnerable west side.

Fed up with not getting any results, the two last year helped launch a campaign to raise funds to build a third fire station in West Maui, in Olowalu south of Lahaina.

Both officers of the West Maui Improvement Foundation and the West Maui Taxpayers Association, they announced a few weeks prior to the deadly fire that they had collected enough money and conditional pledges to account for nearly a quarter of its $2 million fundraising goal.

The foundation previously obtained a 2-acre land donation from Olowalu Land Co. LLC, and laid plans to buy the components for a modular firehouse from a Canadian company and have it shipped and assembled there. A rendering shows a single-bay, two-bedroom station with an apparatus bay.

County officials previously said they would accept the station and fill it with the necessary personnel, gear and equipment.

Nava, an Army veteran and former chairman of the Maui Chamber of Commerce, said he can’t understand why the county hasn’t already bolstered fire protection in West Maui.

“There are more homes, more hotels and more people — but the same amount of firefighters. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever,” he said.

Following the deadly Lahaina fire, Nava and his family have been staying at a Kaanapali hotel.

“The county, the state and MECO (Maui Electric) are all negligent in protecting us,” he said. “The priority should be the health and safety of the community.”

On the night of the Lahaina inferno, Pluta figured public safety personnel would roust him out of bed if the flames were approaching his neighborhood. After all, his Ainakea Road home was only two blocks away from Lahaina’s fire and police stations.

But that never happened. He escaped from his house only after his smoke alarm sounded at 3 a.m. He ended up crawling out his bathroom window seconds before the flames consumed the structure. He ran for his life down the streets through swirling sparks and embers and was eventually picked up by a fire truck.

Pluta, a real estate broker who is president of the West Maui Improvement Foundation, does not blame the police or firefighters for not warning him in advance. He blames politicians over the years for allowing fire and police stations to be understaffed.

“This disaster was self-inflicted,” Pluta said. “I’ve been telling county councils and administrations for years that they better budget for public safety here. All I got was lip service.”

‘Fighting a blowtorch’

Wayne Hedani, who runs the Kaanapali Operations Association, could not believe how windy Aug. 8 was. As he was driving away from his office and West Maui that day, he saw something he never saw before: The entire channel off Lahaina white with foam created by gusts of up to 60 mph.

“The fire department did their best,” Hedani said. “They can always use more resources. But the fire, under those conditions, was unstoppable. The best they could hope for was evacuation.”

Lee, from the firefighter union, said the wind-driven flames were nearly impossible to stop.

“It was like fighting a blowtorch,” he said.

But Lee said he’s talked to Lahaina firefighters who described a lot of “near-misses,” where wind-driven flames could have gotten out of control but were stopped. The West Maui firefighters deserve a lot of credit, he said, but they could have used more help and faster.

“They can definitely use more help,” Lee said.

A Maui County spokesman said Maui Fire Chief Bradford Ventura was busy and unavailable for comment on Friday, and no one else could respond.