Lahaina is not Supposed to Burn Like This Anymore
Native Hawaiian Land Use as a Tool to Combat Fires: The 2022-2023 La Nia Firefighting in Maui, Hawaii
Hawaii has had fires in the past but they are becoming more devastating. Better data dissemination and more traditional land use could assist in avoiding future tragedies.
The Pacific experienced a La Niña phase of the ENSO from the end of 2022 to early 2023, which meant a very damp wet season. Maui saw rainfall that was 90–120% of normal, leading to robust grass growth. El Nio came back in June.
Add high winds—gusts of up to 80 miles per hour drove the flames a mile a minute across Lahaina—and all it takes is a single spark to ignite a fast-moving blaze. “There’s no firefighting capabilities for structure-to-structure urban fire in winds like that,” says Cova. If the wind is blowing like that, a structure will catch on fire, and it will blow into the neighboring home.
Some of the flammable grasses were introduced around the area. But native Hawaiian dryland plants are not necessarily more fire resistant, says Katie Kamelamela, an ethnoecologist at Arizona State University in Tempe. The arrangement of dry fuel on land is what matters the most. Grazing can reduce fuel loads. Bare areas, wet vegetation in the shape of active farms, or even fish ponds can help stop or slow fires.
Kamelamela, who is Native Hawaiian, says that whether the plants in an area are native or introduced is less important than how carefully land is cared for. In the past, people who gathered resources from a forest would also tidy it up, removing undergrowth or even replanting important plants. But such labour-intensive traditional work is hard to fit into a hectic modern life. “Most people in Hawaii have two to three jobs and are just trying to take their kids to soccer practice,” she says.
Hawaii is the only state without a dedicated climate division within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminisatration (NOAA) — something Frazier and a group of colleagues are hoping to change. Better integration with the air force and other agencies would help us understand hazard risks in real time.
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871: The Case of a Tropical Island in the Pacific Ocean and the Discovery of Native Grass on an Invasive Plantation
Rescue crews are still searching for survivors of the catastrophic fire that destroyed the town in Lahaina, Hawaii. It’s the deadliest blaze in modern American history, with 99 people confirmed dead, surpassing the 85 that perished in 2018’s Camp Fire in Paradise, California. Crews have only searched a quarter of Lahaina, so the death toll is expected to rise higher still. At least 2,200 structures have been destroyed.
It was terrible for people to imagine that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 would cause such a huge damage to the city. Fire and building codes were lacking. So were firefighting forces and robust water infrastructure. By the early 20th century, those things had been upgraded. Cities and towns were safer—for a while. But now expansive urban fires have returned, and they are burning with startling frequency and intensity.
The Lahaina fire shows how they can burn in places where a wildfire is not expected, like a modern town on a tropical island in the middle of the Pacific.
These winds across Maui were dry as well, helping to suck the remaining moisture out of vegetation to turn it into fuel. That fuel seems to have been invasive grasses that European colonizers brought when they established plantations. These plants are easy to dried out once the rain stops.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said that there’s “no firefighting capabilities for structure-to-structure urban fire in winds like that” in Hawaii, where a wildfire has killed 99 people. With this, it added, “There’s no firefighting capabilities for structure-to-structure urban fire in winds like that.” The fire broke out last week in the Hawaiian tourist town of Lahaina.