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“Wildfires on Hawaii's Maui have killed at least 96 people, forced tens of thousands of residents and tourists to evacuate the island and devastated the historic resort city of Lahaina. It's the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century.” Reuters
Both sides criticize the local disaster response:
“Consider Rhodes, Greece, an island roughly the same length and width as Maui… Last month several fires broke out in Rhodes… [But] there was only one casualty, a volunteer firefighter. There were evacuation orders from the Greek emergency communications service, known as 112… The service doesn’t require an app or subscription; the messages go to all cellphones in an area at risk, in Greek and in English…
“In Maui, many people didn’t receive timely warnings from the local system, which ‘relied on a series of sometimes confusing social media posts,’ according to the Associated Press. Some survivors have reported receiving no warning messages before the fire reached them, while others said messages appeared and then disappeared from their mobile phones and they couldn’t find instructions. In a state that rolled out sirens and emergency alerts for tsunamis more than 60 years ago, and where sirens are tested every month, there were reportedly no sirens in the melee that followed the fire.”
Costas Synolakis, Wall Street Journal
“A previous report stated that a 2018 brush fire, which forced residents to evacuate homes and burned more than 2,000 acres of land, should be a ‘real world wake-up call’. As was the case in last week’s catastrophe, that blaze occurred in drought conditions, amid high winds from a hurricane traversing the Pacific Ocean. Yet when the worst came to pass in Lahaina, warning sirens failed to work and the island’s firefighting force was ill‑equipped and overstretched…
“Hawaiian Electric, the utility which oversees electricity provision to the vast majority of Maui residents, also has questions to answer… In states such as California, where a catastrophic wildfire destroyed a mountain town in 2018, electricity is now cut off altogether to areas where wind risks triggering a conflagration. Hawaiian Electric has previously acknowledged the effectiveness of this precautionary approach. But it chose last week to keep power lines energised despite weather warnings, a decision which is now the subject of a class-action lawsuit… [Lessons will need] to be learned in the wake of the worst natural disaster in Hawaii’s history.”
Editorial Board, The Guardian
Other opinions below.
“Attributing a single wildfire directly to climate change is an oversimplification of the myriad factors at play. Wildfires can be influenced by various causes, including local weather, forest management, human activities, and natural events like hurricanes passing and changing wind patterns…
“The conditions that are driving this tragic fire event are related to Hurricane Dora passing to the south and disrupting wind and humidity patterns. So, if climate change is making this type of event more frequent that implies that hurricanes, like Dora, will become more frequent… However, global data for the entire century indicates a definitive decrease in the overall number of tropical cyclones… As confirmed by NOAA, warming has lowered the frequency of hurricanes by 13% and thus this type of event in Maui will happen less frequently as the planet continues to warm.”
Matthew Wielicki, Substack
“It should’ve been the easiest thing in the world for staff to set up a podium at the beach this weekend for President Joe Biden to offer some heartfelt sympathy for the victims and survivors of the horrific Maui wildfire. Instead, all America got was a stony presidential ‘no comment’ reply late Sunday… Even after exiting his chopper back in DC on Monday, he offered nothing — though, again, setting up a podium for some fast remarks would’ve been 15 minutes’ work.”
Editorial Board, New York Post
“If former President Donald Trump had that kind of a response to such a disaster, refusing to even comment when asked about the death toll of such a disaster, the media would have ripped him to shreds. We would have been told that his enjoying himself biking and on the beach was evidence that he didn’t care. But with Biden, don’t expect the same response, because he has the magical ‘D’ after his name.”
Nick Arama, RedState
“No one can yet say with certainty what sparked the first fires, although there is much discussion of the local electric company’s poorly maintained power lines and infrastructure. But what’s clear is why the blaze grew so colossal, so quickly. Lahaina was dry enough to burn, in part, because agriculture and development turned it into a tinderbox…
“In the nineteenth century, Lahaina was the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii; Moku‘ula, the home of Hawaiian royalty, was situated on a tiny island in the middle of a pond. But, when colonizers razed native forests to make room for sugarcane, pineapple, and cattle, the area dried out… Foreigners also brought new plants, replacing native vegetation with invasive species like fountain and guinea grasses, which have evolved to burn…
“Rising global temperatures have amplified preëxisting fire seasons in the American West, often to devastating ends. In Hawaii, however, fires were never a regular feature of the landscape. Instead, [Willy Carter, a graduate student studying brush fires in Maui] told me that fires in recent years, and this horrifying week, were fuelled, in part, by persistent drought, and even more by human pressures on the island’s ecology. ‘This is so far from a natural process,’ he said.”
Carolyn Kormann, New Yorker
“Maui is just the latest place to ignite. Canada is in the midst of its worst fire season in history, during which infernos generated smoke that choked cities in the United States. Thousands of tourists and residents had to be evacuated from the Greek island of Rhodes in July because of raging wildfires…
“We have changed the climate, which has changed the weather. We need to stop making things worse, which means switching from fossil fuels to clean energy sources. And we need to face the new reality we have forged.”
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
