At least 106 people have died in the wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui, with the Lahaina Fire in particular leveling the town of the same name.
The blazes erupted more than a week ago, with wildfire experts widely depicting the deadly event as kicking off a new era of climate disaster, as The Hill reported.
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The Lahaina Fire is 85 percent contained as of Tuesday night within an area of about 4 square miles, according to Maui County.
- Another fire in Kula, in Upcountry Maui, is 75 percent contained, while other fires have been fully contained or extinguished.
Hawaii’s fire risk is far from over.
Federal wildfire projections put the island chain at elevated risk for significant fire through November, and many of the state’s biggest municipalities are in the top quarter of all cities nationwide when it comes to serious fire risk.
Honolulu County — home to more than 1 million people — is under greater threat of destructive fire than 89 percent of U.S. counties, according to Wildfire Risk to Communities, a tool offered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service.
While that risk is lower in urban Honolulu, the city core is still at higher risk for fire than 74 percent of U.S. cities.
Elsewhere in the islands: The 46,000 people who live in Hilo — the biggest city on the Big Island — face a risk of destructive wildfire greater than 77 percent of U.S. communities. And the 45,000 residents of Oahu’s largest community, Pearl City, are under greater wildfire threat than 87 percent of American cities.
To put that in context, the Wildfire Risk to Communities tool had pegged now-destroyed Lahaina itself as at higher risk than 92 percent of U.S. towns.
“All the Hawaiian Islands are forecast to be above normal risk as we go into the fall,” Robyn Heffernan, a fire meteorologist at the National Weather Service, told The Hill.
One explanation for this heightened threat is simply geography: the islands’ rugged and often-forested volcanic topography make it a challenging terrain to fight fires.
Firefighters are struggling to contain the Upcountry Fire in Maui, which has greatly eluded control because “hot spots” burning through tight-packed ravines are so hard to access, according to the county.
But climate and development issues are important too. Hawaii is at dual risk from the world’s current oscillation away from the La Niña pattern and into the hotter El Niño — a regular occurrence that is boosting many climate disasters, Heffernan said.
The heat from El Niño is drying forest debris into fuels and readying the land to burn. And El Niño is also leading to powerful tropical winds that fan the flames of any chance spark, Heffernan said.
Those changes are leading to a dynamic that can turn even a relatively small fire deadly, as The Hill reported last week.
Extreme weather conditions are interacting with the tendency of U.S. communities to sprawl into surrounding wildlands to create fires that move too quickly for people to respond, Heffernan said.
“It’s the quick spread that’s noteworthy [of the Lahaina Fire],” Heffernan said. “And wind is a big player, but we have communities that are just up against these wildland areas — so when you have a fast-moving fire, it can impact people very quickly.”
