Fire crews Thursday made progress in a pitched battle to gain control of blazes that have killed at least 53 people and injured dozens of others on the island of Maui. Meanwhile, federal sources with knowledge of the fires told The Times that a breakdown in emergency communications cost precious time, and a number of people in the historic town of Lahaina learned too late that a wall of flames was racing toward them.
The Lahaina wildfire, one of three that ignited on the Hawaiian island Tuesday, left the island’s historic center in smoking ruins. The devastation spurred President Biden on Thursday to declare “a major disaster” in Hawaii.
Sources who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak on the record said that a number of those killed in the Lahaina fire were believed to have died in their vehicles. The death toll thus far is from the most urbanized areas, they said, with some bodies recovered from the harbor.
Maui County Mayor Richard T. Bissen Jr. said Thursday that one of the main roadways out of Lahaina was blocked with multiple downed power lines, and the other route via Kahakuloa was a small roadway that often narrowed to one lane, exacerbating traffic issues.
“What we experienced was such a fast-moving fire through the neighborhood that the initial neighborhood that caught fire, they were basically self-evacuating with fairly little notice,” Maui Fire Chief Bradford Ventura said Thursday.
The death toll was at 53 and was expected to climb much higher in what Gov. Josh Green called “the largest natural disaster in Hawaii state history.”
Search-and-rescue efforts were underway Thursday, two days after the fires ignited with ferocious, speeding flames fanned by winds from a Category 4 hurricane that had passed just south of Hawaii earlier in the week. California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday deployed urban search-and-rescue personnel and other resources to assist the stunned island state.
A colossal banyan tree rises amid the devastation of Lahaina on Thursday.
(Rick Bowmer / Associated Press)
“Maybe these things happen a lot in California,” said Maui resident Andrew Kayes, “but I’ve lived here 15 years and have never seen anything like this.”
Kayes, 49, lives in Maui’s Upcountry region, where one of the fires broke out this week. He watched from his backyard Tuesday night as the blaze grew into a swell of orange flames that glowed against the black sky.
“It looked like a lava flow,” he said.
The Lahaina fire — the blaze responsible for the 53 deaths — was 80% contained Thursday morning, the county of Maui said in a news release. A second blaze, the Pulehu fire, was at 70% containment, officials said. An update on the Upcountry fire was not available Thursday afternoon. Firefighters were continuing their efforts to secure the fires’ perimeters and battle the blazes.
At least 11,000 travelers were evacuated from Maui, officials said. The fires overtook and closed many roads, which became congested and stranded hundreds of people as they raced to the island’s only major airport, Kahului. About 1,400 people stayed overnight at the airport, the county of Maui reported. Airlines have said they are adding more flights, reducing ticket prices and deploying larger planes to aid in evacuation efforts.
Thomas Leonard rests on an air mattress at an evacuation center in the community of Wailuku. His Lahaina apartment was destroyed.
(Rick Bowmer / Associated Press)
Entry into Lahaina remained restricted late Thursday, officials said.
The wildfire raced with such speed that some of those fleeing jumped into the ocean to escape the flames.
Green, the governor, estimated that as many as 1,700 buildings were destroyed, hundreds of them in Lahaina, including many small businesses, a church and a school. Thousands of people have been displaced. West Maui remained without cell or landline phone service or electricity Thursday, the county said. Officials were working to restore power to some 10,000 homes that remained without electricity.
Green said during a public briefing that he expected the cost of the recovery to be in the “billions of dollars.” Accuweather had a preliminary estimate of damage and economic loss at $8 billion to $10 billion.
Even some of the vessels in Lahaina Harbor were destroyed in the blaze.
“A number of the boats on that south arm of Lahaina Harbor, perpendicular to the shoreline, appear to have escaped major damage. All others along the shoreline, and along the outer jetty, were a total loss,” said Lili Crawford, who manages charter fishing reservations out of the harbor.
Green, who had been traveling out of state, returned to Maui on Thursday to assess the damage, his office said in a statement. Several fires also broke out on the Big Island this week, though there were no reports of injuries or homes lost.
“We have suffered a terrible disaster,” Green said in a video posted on social media Wednesday night. He praised the first responders and the state’s emergency response team. “We’re all in this together.”
Biden’s disaster declaration opens the door to federal funding and assistance with state and local recovery efforts. Residents affected by the fires can apply for “grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses” and other federal programs for business owners and residents, the White House said in a statement.
Aerial footage of Lahaina, once the capital of the kingdom of Hawaii, showed homes and businesses decimated, including on Front Street, a popular tourist strip with restaurants and shopping. Cars were burned, smoldering rubble littered the street along the waterfront, boats in the harbor were scorched and gray smoke hovered over charred trees.
The sun shines through clouds over burned-out Lahaina.
(Rick Bowmer / Associated Press)
Rebuilding the local economy could take years, Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke said late Wednesday. The fires had remade the landscape, she said, destroying homes and businesses and taking down infrastructure and broadband capabilities. “It will be a long road to recovery,” she said.
Luke, who was acting on behalf of Green in his absence, extended Hawaii’s state of emergency through the end of the month.
Maui County officials said in a statement that bus evacuations were ongoing Thursday. Visitors were to be taken to the Kahului Airport, while residents would be taken to a central Maui shelter.
Tourists, locals and their loved ones also turned to social media, including Facebook, to seek aid and set up rides from disaster zones to evacuation shelters. An estimated 2,000 people have stayed in at least six shelters that have opened for evacuees, according to reports. The Red Cross said some residents sought shelter overnight while others had visited during the day, seeking resources. State officials said the decision on when to allow residents to return to their homes would be made by Maui County officials and Mayor Bissen.
Many people were also desperately seeking loved ones. A spreadsheet set up on Google Drive with names of more than 2,000 people grew as new rows for the missing were added and loved ones marked dozens of family members as “found.” The link to the sheet repeatedly crashed because of high traffic.
Although the rest of the state remains open to visitors, officials have asked non-residents to leave Maui and urged others to avoid nonessential trips to the island.
The airport was still overrun with people trying to catch flights Thursday. Many major airlines do not offer short-distance flights among the Hawaiian islands, but carriers with major business on the island said they were doing what they could to get passengers to the mainland.
The two largest airlines operating in Hawaii — Hawaiian Airlines and Southwest — have reduced one-way fares to $19 for flights from Kahului to Honolulu International Airport on Oahu, where the Red Cross has opened shelters for evacuees.
The exact cause of the blaze has not been determined, but a number of factors including high winds, low humidity and dry vegetation probably contributed, said Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, adjutant general for the Hawaii State Department of Defense. The weather service had issued a red flag warning ahead of the fires, indicating that warm temperatures, very low humidity and stronger winds were expected to combine to produce an increased risk of fire danger. But Hara said wind strength — forecast at 50 to 55 mph — far exceeded the predictions, shooting up to 85 mph.
Experts also said climate change was increasing the likelihood of more extreme weather.
An update from the National Drought Monitor early Thursday showed drought levels increased across the state from 6% to 14% in the last week. Maui County in particular saw an increase in severe drought conditions, from about 6% last week to 16% this week.
Clay Trauernicht, a fire scientist at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, said in a tweet that although nearby Hurricane Dora played a role, the problem lay largely with widespread “unmanaged, non-native grasslands” from “decades of declining agriculture.”
“The transformation to savanna makes the landscape way more sensitive to bad ‘fire weather’ — hot, dry, windy conditions,” Trauernicht said. “It also means we get huge buildups of fuels during rainy periods.”
Entire blocks were razed by fire in the historic area of Maui.
(Tiffany Kidder Winn / Associated Press)
In the Upcountry area, at least two homes were destroyed Tuesday in a fire that engulfed about 1.7 square miles.
Jayme Gomes, a 29-year-old Wrightwood resident whose father lives in Lahaina, told The Times she didn’t hear from him for two days. He was born on the island and had family there.
Gomes finally got a call from her father Thursday afternoon, she said. His house had burned down and he was separated from relatives during the evacuation, but he finally made it to the other side of the island and found a phone charger.
“It’s truly devastating,” Gomes said. “The whole town is gone. It’s not just a tourist destination. It’s home to many people.”
Gomes’ family is staying with friends in Hawaii.
“I know that many people in Hawaii are going to help each other, because that is what aloha is,” she said. “That’s how everybody is there.”
