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Tag: Wildfires
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At least 80 dead in Hawaii fires, officials say
At least 80 dead in Hawaii fires, officials say – CBS News
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Searching for the missing on Maui, some wait in agony to make contact. And then the phone rings
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WAILUKU, Hawaii — Leshia Wright heard the crackle of the fast-moving inferno closing in on her home in Lahaina and decided it was time to evacuate.
The 66-year-old grabbed her medication for a pulmonary disease and her passport and fled the subdivision in the historic Hawaii oceanside community just minutes before flames engulfed the neighborhood. Hours later, she called family members and told them she slept in her car.
Then her phone went dead.
The next 40 hours were agony for her daughter in New York and sister in Arizona. But early Friday morning, Wright called back and told them she was OK.
“I’m obviously relieved beyond words that my mother is alive,” said Alexandra Wright, who added that her mother finally was able to charge her phone after reaching a friend’s undamaged house on a quarter-tank of gas.
The firestorm that killed dozens of people and leveled this historic town launched hundreds of people on a desperate search for their loved ones — many from thousands of miles away — and some are still searching. But amid the tragedy, glimmers of joy and relief broke through for the lucky ones as their mothers, brothers and fathers made it to safety and finally got in touch again.
Kathleen Llewellyn also worked the phones from thousands of miles away in Bardstown, Kentucky, to find her 71-year-old brother, Jim Caslin, who had lived in Lahaina for 45 years. Her many calls went straight to voicemail.
“He’s homeless; he lives in a van; he’s got leukemia; he’s got mobility issues and asthma and pulmonary issues,” she said.
Waiting and calling and waiting more, Llewellyn grew uneasy. Anxiety took hold and then turned to resignation as Llewellyn, a semi-retired attorney, tried to distract herself with work and weeding her garden.
She recalled thinking, “If this is his end, this is his end. I hope not. But there’s nothing I could do about it.”
Then her phone rang.
“I’m fine,” Caslin said. “I’m fine.”
Caslin told his sister he spent two days escaping the inferno with a friend in a journey that included bumper-to-bumper traffic, road closures, downed trees and power lines and a punctured tire. The pair nervously watched the gas needle drop before a gas station appeared and they pulled into the long line.
“I am a pretty controlled person, but I did have a good cry,” Llewellyn said.
Sherrie Esquivel was frantic to find her father, a retired mail carrier in Lahaina, but there was little she could do from her home in Dunn, North Carolina.
She put her 74-year-old father’s name on a missing person’s list with her phone number and waited.
“As the days were going on, I’m like, ‘There’s no way that he survived because … how have we not heard from him?’” she said. “I felt so helpless.”
Early Friday morning, she got a call from her father’s neighbor, who had tracked Thom Leonard down. He was safe at a shelter, but lost everything in the fire, the friend told her.
It wasn’t until Esquivel read an Associated Press article that she learned exactly how her father survived the fire. He was interviewed Thursday at a shelter on Maui.
Leonard tried but couldn’t leave Lahaina in his Jeep, so he scrambled to the ocean and hid behind the seawall for hours, dodging hot ash and cinders blowing everywhere.
“When I heard that, I thought of him when he was in Vietnam, and I thought, ‘Oh, gosh, his PTSD must have kicked in and his survival instincts,’” she said.
Firefighters eventually escorted Leonard and others out of the burning city.
Esquivel assumes it’s the same seawall across the street from his home where they took family photos at sunset in January.
She hoped to speak to her father, whom she described as a “hippie” who refuses to buy a cellphone.
When they talk, the first words out of her mouth will be: “I love you, but I’m angry that you didn’t get a cellphone,’” Esquivel said.
Interviewed Friday at the same shelter, Leonard also began to tear up when he heard what his daughter wanted to tell him. “I’m quivering,” he said, adding he loves her too.
He said he had a flip phone, but didn’t know how to use it.
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Thiessen reported from Anchorage, Alaska, and Komenda from Tacoma, Washington.
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The death toll from the wildfires in Maui has risen to 80, county officials say
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The death toll from the wildfires in Maui has risen to 80, county officials say
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Survivors of Maui’s fires return home to ruins, death toll up to 67. New blaze prompts evacuations
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LAHAINA, Hawaii — Blackened hulks of burned-out cars, the pavement streaked with melted and then rehardened chrome. Block after block of flattened homes and businesses. Incinerated telephone poles and elevator shafts rising from ashy lots where apartment buildings once stood. A truck bed full of glass bottles, warped into surreal shapes by the furious heat.
Anthony Garcia assessed the devastation as he stood under Lahaina’s iconic banyan tree, now charred, and swept twisted branches into neat piles next to another heap filled with dead animals: cats, roosters and other birds killed by the smoke and flames. Somehow it made sense in a world turned upside-down.
“If I don’t do something, I’ll go nuts,” said Garcia, who lost everything he owned. “I’m losing my faith in God.”
Garcia and other residents were faced with widespread destruction as they took stock of their shattered homes and lives Friday, when the toll rose to 67 confirmed dead in the wildfires that tore through parts of Maui this week and were still short of full containment.
A new fire late Friday triggered the evacuation of Kaanapali in West Maui, a community northeast of the area that burned earlier, the Maui Police Department announced on social media. No details of the evacuation were immediately provided.
Attorney General Anne Lopez announced plans to conduct a comprehensive review of decision-making and standing policies impacting the response to the deadly wildfires.
“My Department is committed to understanding the decisions that were made before and during the wildfires and to sharing with the public the results of this review,” Lopez said in a statement.
The wildfires are the state’s deadliest natural disaster in decades, surpassing a 1960 tsunami that killed 61 people. An even deadlier tsunami in 1946, which killed more than 150 on the Big Island, prompted development of a territory-wide emergency system with sirens that are tested monthly.
Many fire survivors said they didn’t hear any sirens or receive a warning giving them enough time to prepare, realizing they were in danger only when they saw flames or heard explosions.
“There was no warning,” said Lynn Robinson, who lost her home.
Hawaii emergency management records do no indicate warning sirens sounded before people had to run for their lives. Officials sent alerts to mobile phones, televisions and radio stations, but widespread power and cellular outages may have limited their reach.
Gov. Josh Green warned the death toll would likely rise as search and rescue operations continue. Authorities set a curfew from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. Saturday.
“The recovery’s going to be extraordinarily complicated, but we do want people to get back to their homes and just do what they can to assess safely, because it’s pretty dangerous,” Green told Hawaii News Now.
Cadaver-sniffing dogs were deployed to search for the dead, Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen Jr. said.
Fueled by a dry summer and strong winds from a passing hurricane, at least three wildfires erupted on Maui, racing through parched brush covering the island.
The most serious blaze swept into Lahaina on Tuesday and left a grid of gray rubble wedged between the blue ocean and lush green slopes. Associated Press journalists found the devastation included nearly every building on Front Street, the heart of historic Lahaina and the economic hub of Maui.
There was an eerie traffic jam of charred cars that didn’t escape the inferno as surviving roosters meandered through the ashes. Skeletal remains of buildings bowed under roofs that pancaked in the blaze. Palm trees were torched, boats in the harbor were scorched and the stench of burning lingered.
“It hit so quick, it was incredible,” Kyle Scharnhorst said as he surveyed his damaged apartment complex.
Summer and Gilles Gerling sought to salvage keepsakes from the ashes of their home. All they could find was the piggy bank Summer Gerling’s father gave her as a child, their daughter’s jade bracelet and watches they gifted each other for their wedding. Their wedding rings were gone.
They described their fear as the strong wind whipped the smoke and flames closer, but said they were happy to have made it out alive with their two children.
“Safety was the main concern. These are all material things,” Gilles Gerling said.
The wildfire is already projected to be the second-costliest disaster in Hawaii history, behind only Hurricane Iniki in 1992, according to disaster and risk modeling firm Karen Clark & Company. The fire is the deadliest in the U.S. since the 2018 Camp Fire in California, which killed at least 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise.
The danger on Maui was well known. Maui County’s hazard mitigation plan updated in 2020 identified Lahaina and other West Maui communities as having frequent wildfires and several buildings at risk. The report also noted West Maui had the island’s second-highest rate of households without a vehicle and the highest rate of non-English speakers.
“This may limit the population’s ability to receive, understand and take expedient action during hazard events,” the plan stated.
Maui’s firefighting efforts may have been hampered by limited staff and equipment.
Bobby Lee, president of the Hawaii Firefighters Association, said there are a maximum of 65 county firefighters working at any given time with responsibility for three islands: Maui, Molokai and Lanai.
The department has about 13 fire engines and two ladder trucks, but no off-road vehicles to thoroughly attack brush fires before they reach roads or populated areas, he said.
Maui water officials warned Kula and Lahaina residents not to drink running water, which may be contaminated even after boiling, and to only take short, lukewarm showers in well-ventilated rooms to avoid possible chemical vapor exposure.
Andrew Whelton, a Purdue University engineering professor whose team assisted with the Camp Fire and Colorado’s 2021 Marshall Fire, said showering in water potentially containing hazardous waste levels of benzene is not advisable and a do-not-use order would be appropriate until analysis is complete.
Lahaina resident Lana Vierra, who filled out FEMA assistance forms Friday at a relative’s house, fled Tuesday and was eager to return, despite knowing the home where she raised five children and treasured items like baby pictures and yearbooks were gone.
“To actually stand there on your burnt grounds and get your wheels turning on how to move forward — I think it will give families that peace,” she said.
Riley Curran said he fled his Front Street home after climbing up a neighboring building to get a better look. He doubts county officials could have done more due to the speed of the onrushing flames.
“It’s not that people didn’t try to do anything,” Curran said. “The fire went from 0 to 100.”
Curran had seen horrendous wildfires growing up in California, but “I’ve never seen one eat an entire town in four hours.”
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Kelleher reported from Honolulu. Associated Press writers Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho; Andrew Selsky in Bend, Oregon; Bobby Caina Calvan and Beatrice Dupuy in New York; Chris Megerian in Salt Lake City; Audrey McAvoy in Wailuku, Hawaii; Adam Beam in Sacramento, California; and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed.
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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Maui wildfires kill at least 80 people, and the race to find survivors is grim as countless residents in torched areas remain missing | CNN
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CNN
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At least 80 people have been killed in Maui’s wildfires, officials said late Friday, as search efforts for survivors are ongoing and many remain missing.
The death toll rose from an announced 67 earlier Friday, making the fires the largest natural disaster in the state’s history. The death toll continued to climb Friday, surpassing the state’s record natural disaster death toll of 61 from a 1960 tsunami that hit Hilo Bay.
On Friday evening, residents in Kaanapali were being evacuated after police said there was a fire in western Maui.
“At this time, there are no restrictions to exit the west side. Our priority is to ensure the safety of the community and first responders. We will allow entrance once it is safe to do so,” police said in a Facebook post.
Gov. Josh Green told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Friday that none of the human remains discovered in nearby Lahaina were found inside structures yet, but the confirmed fatalities “did occur out in the open as people tried to escape the fire.”
Green said that within days officials expect to have a more comprehensive idea of how many lives were lost.
“We will continue to see loss of life,” Green said during a news conference late Thursday. “We also have many hundreds of homes destroyed, and that’s going to take a great deal of time to recover from.”
Now, families wait in agony to learn what happened to their missing loved ones.
Live updates: Deadly wildfires burn across Maui
Timm Williams Sr., a 66-year-old disabled veteran who uses a wheelchair, last spoke with his family Wednesday as he was trying to flee Kaanapali, just north of the obliterated town of Lahaina.
Shortly before he went missing, Williams sent a photo of flames shooting toward the sky, his granddaughter Brittany Talley told CNN.
While he fled, Williams said he couldn’t tell exactly where he was due to the intense smoke in the air, Talley recalled. “He was attempting to make it to a shelter, but all of the roads were blocked,” she said.
The family has tried every means possible to find the missing grandfather, but to no avail.
“It has been difficult,” Talley said. “Every minute that goes by is another minute that he could be hurt or in danger.”
While rescue crews scramble to find survivors, here’s the latest on the ongoing catastrophe:
• Cadaver dogs are looking for victims: Search-and-rescue teams with cadaver dogs from California and Washington are in Maui to help with recovery efforts, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said.
• Thousands are displaced: About 1,400 people slept at an airport Wednesday night and more than 1,300 stayed in emergency shelters before many of them were taken to the airport to leave the island, Maui County officials said. Thousands of people are believed to have been displaced, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told CNN on Thursday.
• Billions of dollars in losses: Determining the full scope of the fires’ impacts on the island will take time, “but it will be in the billions of dollars without a doubt,” the governor said Thursday.
It will take many years to rebuild Lahaina, where “upwards of 1,700 buildings” may have been destroyed, Green told CNN. He said it appears about 80% of the town is “gone.”
• Housing appeal: With many having nowhere to stay, the governor asked residents to open up their homes and hotels to help those in need. “If you have additional space in your home, if you have the capacity to take someone in from west Maui, please do,” Green said.
“Please consider bringing those people into your lives.”
• Fires have burned for days: As of Thursday, the four largest fires still were active in Maui County, Fire Chief Bradford Ventura said. “Additionally, we’ve had many small fires in between these large fires,” the chief said.
“And with the current weather pattern that we’re facing, we still have the potential for rapid fire behavior.” The wildfire that torched Lahaina was 80% contained by Thursday morning, Maui County officials said.
• Communication and power outages: Officials have resorted to satellite phones to communicate with providers on the west side of Maui to restore power to the area, Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke said.
About 11,000 homes and businesses were in the dark early Friday, according to the tracking site PowerOutage.us.
• Resources sent to Maui: President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration to provide federal funding for recovery costs in Maui County. California plans to send a search and rescue team to help support efforts on the ground in Maui. And more than 130 members from the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard have been assigned to provide assistance.
No one knows how many people were still missing Friday after wildfires annihilated the historic town of Lahaina, where 13,000 people lived.
“Here’s the challenge: There’s no power. There’s no internet. There’s no radio coverage,” Maui County Police Chief John Pelletier said Thursday.
Lahaina – an economic hub that draws millions of tourists each year and the one-time capital of the kingdom of Hawaii – is “all gone,” said Maui County Mayor Richard T. Bissen Jr.
Residents of west Maui will be allowed to access Lahaina starting Friday at noon local time, according to a news release from the county. Residents will need identification with proof of residency. Visitors will need proof of hotel reservations. Barricades have been set up to prevent access to the “heavily impacted area of historic Lahaina town” where search crews are continuing to look for victims of the fires.
A curfew will also be in effect from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. local time “in historic Lahaina town and affected areas,” the news release says.
“Now I want to caution everyone, Lahaina is a devastated zone,” Green warned Friday in an interview with local station KHON. Returning residents “will see destruction like they’ve not ever seen in their lives. Everyone, please brace themselves as they go back.”
Green said a hotline will likely be established to connect displaced residents with available rooms in homes and hotels.
Search dogs have not yet been able to access every burned building, Green said, cautioning residents not to enter any charred structure that appears unsafe.
The governor said he plans to return to Maui on Saturday.
In a Friday news release, the Department of Water Supply also asked Maui residents to conserve water, as first responders continue to fight the flames and intermittent power outages take place. The department asked residents island-wide to refrain from washing cars, washing sidewalks and driveways, and irrigating lawns.
In pictures: The deadly Maui wildfires
Most of Maui looked like its idyllic self on Tuesday morning before the flames spread out of control.
At 9:55 a.m., Maui County posted a seemingly optimistic update on the Lahaina fire:
“Maui Fire Department declared the Lahaina brush fire 100% contained shortly before 9 a.m. today,” the county said on Facebook Tuesday.
About an hour later, the county updated residents on another wildfire burning:
“Kula Fire Update No. 2 at 10:50 a.m.: Firefighter crews remain on scene of a brush fire that was reported at 12:22 a.m. today near Olinda Road in Kula and led to evacuations of residents in the Kula 200 and Hanamu Road areas,” the county said.
By Tuesday afternoon, another wildfire became an increasing threat:
“With the potential risk of escalating conditions from an Upcountry brush fire, the Fire Department is strongly advising residents of Piʻiholo and Olinda roads to proactively evacuate,” Maui County posted at 3:20 p.m. Less than an hour later, it said, “The Fire Department is calling for the immediate evacuation of residents of the subdivision including Kulalani Drive and Kulalani Circle due to an Upcountry brush fire.”
Shortly later, the county said the Lahaina fire had resurged.
“An apparent flareup of the Lahaina fire forced the closure of Lahaina Bypass around 3:30 p.m.,” Maui County posted at 4:45 p.m.
And by 5:50 p.m. Tuesday, there were “Multiple evacuations in place for Lahaina and Upcountry Maui fires,” the county said.
As the ferocious fires spread, some people jumped into the ocean to escape the flames. Rescuers plucked dozens of people from the water or the shore.
Green said he has authorized a “comprehensive review” of the response to the fast-moving fires. Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez will spearhead that review, her office announced Friday.
“My Department is committed to understanding the decisions that were made before and during the wildfires and to sharing with the public the results of this review,” Lopez said in a statement. “As we continue to support all aspects of the ongoing relief effort, now is the time to begin this process of understanding.”
State records show that Maui’s warning sirens were not activated, and the emergency communications with residents was largely limited to mobile phones and broadcasters at a time when most power and cell service was already cut.
“The telecommunications were destroyed very rapidly,” the governor said, blaming the rapid spread of the fires on “global warming, combined with drought, combined with a superstorm.”
Green added that restoring utilities will likely to be a lengthy process because of Lahaina’s remote location, as workers and raw materials cannot simply be driven to Hawaii. “This is not to make an excuse. This is just to explain the realities of the island, especially in the post-Covid era,” he said.
May Wedelin-Lee is one of countless residents who lost homes in Lahaina. She described the horror and desperation of those trying to escape and survive.
“The apocalypse was happening,” she told CNN on Thursday.
“People were crying on the side of the road and begging,” Wedelin-Lee said. “Some people had bicycles, people ran, people had skateboards, people had cats under their arm. They had a baby in tow, just sprinting down the street.”
The fire moved so quickly that many left their homes immediately with little notice from authorities, Maui County’s fire chief said.
“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,” fire chief Brad Ventura said.
The Coast Guard rescued 17 people who fled into the Pacific Ocean to escape the flames, the commander of Section Honolulu said Friday.
Coast Guard resources – including three cutters and two small boat crews – patrolled about 500 square miles of the harbor searching for survivors for more than 15 hours, Captain Aja Kirksey said at a Friday news conference.
One person was found dead and the survivors rescued are all in stable condition, according to Kirksey.
The fires have damaged or destroyed hundreds of structures in Maui County, local officials estimate.
“All of those buildings virtually are going to have to be rebuilt,” Green said Thursday. “It will be a new Lahaina that Maui builds in its own image with its own values.”
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Survivors say they had little to no warning about deadly Maui wildfires
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Survivors say they had little to no warning about deadly Maui wildfires – CBS News
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In deadly Maui wildfires, communication failed. Chaos overtook Lahaina along with the flames
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WAILUKU, Hawaii — In the hours before a wildfire engulfed the town of Lahaina, Maui County officials failed to activate sirens that would have warned the entire population of the approaching flames and instead relied on a series of sometimes confusing social media posts that reached a much smaller audience.
Power and cellular outages for residents further stymied communication efforts. Radio reports were scarce, some survivors reported, even as the blaze began to consume the town. Road blocks then forced fleeing drivers onto one narrow downtown street, creating a bottleneck that was quickly surrounded by flames on all sides. At least 67 people have been confirmed dead so far.
The silent sirens have raised questions about whether everything was done to alert the public in a state that possesses an elaborate emergency warning system for a variety of dangers including wars, volcanoes, hurricanes and wildfires.
Hector Bermudez left his apartment at Lahaina Shores shortly after 4:30 p.m. Tuesday after the smell of smoke woke him up from a nap. He asked his neighbor if he was also leaving.
“He said, ‘No, I am waiting for the authorities to see what they are going to do,’” Bermudez recounted. “And I said, ‘No, no no, please go. This smoke is going to kill us. You have to go. Please. You gotta get out of here. Don’t wait for nobody.’”
His neighbor, who is about 70 and has difficulty walking, refused.
Bermudez doesn’t know if he survived.
Officials with Maui’s Emergency Management Agency did not immediately respond Friday to questions about sirens and other communications issues.
Hawaii’s Attorney General Anne Lopez said her office will be conducting a comprehensive review of decision-making and standing policies surrounding the wildfires.
“My Department is committed to understanding the decisions that were made before and during the wildfires and to sharing with the public the results of this review,” she said in a statement Friday, adding that “now is the time to begin this process of understanding.”
The Associated Press created a timeline of the wildfires, using information from multiple sources including the county’s announcements, state and local Emergency Management Alerts and interviews with officials and survivors.
The timeline shows public updates on the fires were spotty and often vague, and much of the county’s attention was focused on another dangerous, larger fire in Upcountry Maui that was threatening neighborhoods in Kula. It shows no indication that county officials ever activated the region’s all-hazard siren system, and reveals other emergency alerts were scarce.
In the hours before the wildfires began, however, warnings about high winds were frequent and widely disseminated by the county and other agencies. A hurricane passing far to the south was expected to bring gusts of up to 65 mph (105 kph), residents were told on Monday.
The Upcountry fire started first, reported not long after midnight on Tuesday, and the first evacuations near Kula followed.
The fire near Lahaina started later, around 6:37 a.m. Tuesday. Some homes in Lahaina’s most inland neighborhood were evacuated, but by 9:55 a.m. the county reported that the fire was fully contained. Still, the announcement included another warning that high winds would remain a concern for the next 24 hours.
The power also went out early that morning, leaving several thousand customers in the Lahaina/West Maui region and Upcountry without electricity. Several downed power lines required repair.
By 11 a.m., firefighting crews from several towns and the Hawaii Department of Lands had converged on the Upcountry fire, but wind gusts reaching 80 mph (129 kph) made conditions unsafe for helicopters. At 3:20 p.m., more Upcountry neighborhoods were evacuated.
The Lahaina fire, meanwhile, had escaped containment and forced the closure of the Lahaina Bypass road by 3:30 p.m. The announcement, however, didn’t make it into a county fire update until 4:45 p.m. and didn’t show up on the county Facebook page until nearly 5 p.m., when survivors say flames were surrounding the cars of families trapped downtown.
But while the Lahaina fire was spreading, Maui County and Hawaii Emergency Management Agency officials were making other urgent announcements — including a Facebook post about additional evacuations near the Upcountry fire and an announcement that the acting governor had issued an emergency proclamation.
In the Upcountry evacuation Facebook post at 3:20 p.m., Fire Assistant Chief Jeff Giesea shared an ominous warning.
“The fire can be a mile or more from your house, but in a minute or two, it can be at your house,” Giesea said.
Mike Cicchino lived below the Lahaina Bypass in one of Lahaina’s more inland neighborhoods. He went to his house at 3:30 p.m. and minutes later realized his neighborhood was quickly being enveloped by flames.
He yelled to the neighbor kids to get their mom and leave. He ran inside to collect his wife and the dogs they were watching. Cicchino, along with others in the neighborhood, then jumped in their cars to leave. He listened for announcements on his car radio, but said there was essentially no information.
The government’s social media attention turned from Upcountry back to Lahaina at 4:29 p.m., when Hawaii EMA posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the local Maui EMA had announced an immediate evacuation for an inland subdivision in Lahaina. Residents were directed to shelter at the Lahaina Civic Center on the north side of town.
Just before 5 p.m., Maui County shared a new Lahaina fire report on Facebook: “Flareup forces Lahaina Bypass road closure; shelter in place encouraged.”
Many were already running from the flames. Lynn Robison evacuated from her apartment near the waterfront’s Front Street at 4:33 p.m.
“There was no warning. There was absolutely none. Nobody came around. We didn’t see a fire truck or anybody,” Robison said.
Lana Vierra left her neighborhood about a mile (less than 2 kilometers) away around the same time. Her boyfriend had stopped by and told her he’d seen the approaching fire on the drive.
“He told me straight, ‘People are going to die in this town; you gotta get out,’” she recalled. There had been no sirens, no alerts on her cellphone, she said.
But access to the main highway — the only road leading in and out of Lahaina — was cut off by barricades set up by authorities. The roadblocks forced people directly into harm’s way, funneling cars onto Front Street.
“All the locals were pigeonholed into Lahaina in that corner there, and I felt like the county put us into a death trap,” Cicchino said.
Nathan Baird and his family escaped by driving past a barricade, he told Canadian Broadcaster CBC Radio.
“Traffic was all over the place. Nobody knew where to go. They were trying to make everybody go up to the Civic Center and … it just didn’t make sense to me,” Baird said. “I was so confused. At first, I was like, ‘Why are all these people driving towards the fire?’”
Cicchino and his wife became trapped by walls of flame as Front Street burned. They ran for the ocean, spending hours crouching behind the sea wall or treading water in the choppy waves, depending on which area felt safest as the ever-changing fire raged.
At 5:20 p.m., Maui County shared another Lahaina fire update on Facebook: Evacuations in one subdivision were continuing, but access to the main highway was back open.
The U.S. Coast Guard’s first notification about the fires was when the search and rescue command center in Honolulu received reports of people in the water near Lahaina at 5:45 p.m., said Capt. Aja Kirksy, commander of Coast Guard Sector Honolulu.
The boats were hard to see because of the smoke, but Cicchino and others used cellphones to flash lights at the vessels, guiding them in.
Cicchino helped load children into the Coast Guard boats, and at one point loaned his cellphone — which had been stashed in his wife’s waterproof pouch — to a member of the guard so they could contact fire crews. He said the rescue took hours, and he and his wife were finally brought out of Lahaina around 1 a.m. Wednesday.
Maui County Facebook posts around 8:40 p.m. Tuesday urged residents in the surrounding area who weren’t impacted by the fires to shelter in place, and said smoke was forcing more road closures. A commenter pointed out the communication problems just before 9 p.m. “You do realize that all communication to Lahaina is cut off and nobody can get in touch with anyone on that side,” the commenter wrote.
Riley Curran, who fled his Lahaina home after climbing up a neighboring apartment building to get a better look at the fire, doesn’t think there is anything the county could have done.
“It’s not that people didn’t try to do anything. It’s that it was so fast no one had time to do anything,“ Curran said. “The fire went from 0 to 100.”
But Cicchino said it all felt like the county wasn’t prepared and government agencies weren’t communicating with each other.
“I feel like the county really cost a lot of peoples’ lives and homes that day. I felt like a lot of this could have been prevented if they just thought about this stuff in the morning, and took their precaution,” he said. “You live in a fire zone. They have a lot of fires. You need to prepare for fires.”
The all-hazard sirens are tested each month to ensure they are in working order. During the most recent test, Aug. 1, they malfunctioned in three separate incidents in three counties. Maui’s siren tone was too short, so officials repeated the test later that day, successfully.
Karl Kim directs the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center, a University of Hawaii-based organization that develops training materials to help officials respond to natural disasters.
Kim said it’s too soon to know exactly how the warning and alert system might have saved more lives in Lahaina, and noted that wildfires are often more challenging to manage than volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and even earthquakes because they are more difficult to detect and track over time.
“I think it’s a wake-up call,” he said. “We have to invest more in understanding of wildfires and the threats that they provide, which aren’t as well understood.”
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Boone reported from Boise, Idaho, and Kelleher from Honolulu. Associated Press journalists Andrew Selsky in Salem, Oregon; Matt Sedensky in New York City; Haven Daley in Wailuku, Hawaii; Helen Wieffering in Washington; and Christopher Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico contributed.
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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Thousands displaced by Maui wildfire
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Maui airport crowded with tourists attempting to evacuate
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Lahaina lies in ruins after devastating Maui wildfire
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Aerial photos show total destruction as wildfires ravage historic Lahaina, Hawaii
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The hall of historic Waiola Church in Lahaina and nearby Lahaina Hongwanji Mission are engulfed in flames along Wainee Street in Lahaina, Hawaii, Aug. 8, 2023.
Matthew Thayer/ | The Maui News | AP
Wildfires in Hawaii have devastated the historic city of Lahaina, the former capital of the islands when they were an independent kingdom.
Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, who surveyed the damage, said the city had been “reduced to ashes.” Although the blaze in Lahaina is 80% contained, there is still an active fire. The city remains without power.
At least 67 people have been killed by the fires as search, rescue and recovery operations continue. Gov. Josh Green said hundreds of homes have been destroyed, leaving thousands without shelter.
Lahaina carries deep cultural significance to Hawaiians. King Kamehameha I established Lahaina as his royal residence in the early 19th century.
“It’s absolutely heartbreaking. The recovery process will be long, but we’re committed to these families and communities,” Schatz said on social media.
Wildfire devastation is seen outside the city of Lahaina, Hawaii, Aug. 10, 2023.
Rick Bowmer | AP
An aerial image taken Aug. 10, 2023, shows destroyed homes and buildings burned to the ground in Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui, Hawaii.
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images
An aerial image taken Aug. 10, 2023, shows a person walking down Front Street past destroyed buildings burned to the ground in Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui, Hawaii.
Patrick T. Fallon | Afp | Getty Images
An aerial image taken Aug. 10, 2023, shows destroyed cars in Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui, Hawaii.
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images
An aerial image taken Aug. 10, 2023, shows destroyed homes and buildings on the waterfront burned to the ground in Lahaina in the aftermath of the wildfires in western Maui, Hawaii.
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images
A burned boat is seen in the waters fronting Lahaina after wildfires driven by high winds burned across most of the town several days ago, Maui, Hawaii, Aug.10, 2023.
Marco Garcia | Reuters
An aerial image taken Aug. 10, 2023, shows destroyed homes and buildings burned to the ground in Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui, Hawaii.
Patrick T. Fallon | Afp | Getty Images
An aerial image taken Aug. 10, 2023, shows destroyed homes and buildings burned to the ground in Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui, Hawaii.
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images
Wildfire wreckage is shown Aug. 10, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. The search of the wildfire wreckage on the Hawaiian island of Maui revealed a wasteland of burned-out homes and obliterated communities as firefighters battled the stubborn blaze, making it the deadliest in the U.S. in recent years.
Rick Bowmer | AP
Two Hawaii Army National Guard CH47 Chinook perform aerial water bucket drops on the island of Maui to fight the wildfires, Maui, Hawaii, Aug. 9, 2023.
Air Force Master Sgt. Andrew Jackson
An aerial view of Lahaina after wildfires burned through the town on the Hawaiian island of Maui, Aug. 10, 2023.
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images
An aerial view shows the community of Lahaina after wildfires driven by high winds burned across most of the town several days ago in Lahaina, Hawaii, Aug. 10, 2023.
Marco Garcia | Reuters
An aerial view shows the community of Lahaina after wildfires driven by high winds burned across most of the town several days ago, Lahaina, Hawaii, Aug. 10, 2023.
Marco Garcia | Reuters
Cars drive away from Lahaina after wildfires driven by high winds burned across most of the town several days ago, Maui, Hawaii, Aug. 10, 2023.
Marco Garcia | Reuters
Wildfire wreckage is shown in Lahaina, Hawaii, Aug. 10, 2023.
Rick Bowmer | AP
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As flames swallowed Maui, survivors made harrowing escapes
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An immigrant cook building a new life. A widow preparing to say goodbye. And a couple taking their vows.
All were caught in the crossfire, forced to flee as flames swallowed parts of Maui, that drop in the Pacific where roads wind past waterfalls, turtles glide through gem-blue waters and a volcano towers overhead.
These are the stories of the survivors:
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By the time Marlon Vasquez heard the alarms, there was only time to run.
The 31-year-old cook shouted for his brother and opened the door of their Lahaina rental home to thick smoke and intense heat.
“The fire was almost on top of us,” he said.
The two sprinted. And, running on for what felt like an eternity, a hellscape unfurled. Day turned to night as smoke blotted out the sun, occasionally bared as a red orb. Roads clogged with cars. People dove into the Pacific. At one point, the flames chased him as strong winds blew them down a mountainside. The air was so black he vomited.
“We ran and ran. We ran almost the whole night and into the next day because the fire didn’t stop,” Vasquez said.
The brothers kept running down the coast until they came upon a motorist who drove them to a shelter where they joined about 200 others in a gymnasium.
The restaurant Vasquez worked at was destroyed. He only managed to grab his passport, wallet, a few bottles of water and a can of sardines.
He arrived in the U.S. from Guatemala at the start of 2022. Now, his car and everything he worked for has been torched.
He isn’t sure if the roommates he and his brother lived with made it out. He wonders about the people they passed who were unable to run as they did. He doesn’t know where they will go next. They will look for work in whatever state or country that has jobs for them.
There seemed to be only one certainty for Vasquez.
“We’ll keep struggling,” he said.
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Tracey Graham was due to spend her last week on Maui snorkeling with sea turtles, dining with friends, and reminiscing about the eight years she called the “beautiful, wonderful piece of paradise” home.
Instead, she fled the fires, is sleeping in a shelter and wondering what became of the places she loved.
“It’s scary,” says 61-year-old Graham. “It’s devastating — that’s the only word I keep coming back to.”
Graham, who was staying with a friend north of Lahaina, was about to take an afternoon nap Tuesday when she noticed the smell. She went outside, saw flames and smoke, and heard popping noises.
She fled with friends, grabbing her passport, her journal and a framed photo with a button that played a recording of her husband, Cole Wright, telling her how much he loved her.
He died of prostate cancer four months ago.
Authorities kept directing her and her friends to different points. Once she made it to the shelter set up at the Maui War Memorial, rumors of the devastation raged, with many unsure whether their homes and loved ones were safe. She hasn’t been able to reach one of her close friends.
“It’s disorienting,” she says. “You just don’t know what’s what.”
Graham is departing Saturday to start a new life in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Her plan was already made after her husband’s death, but the tragedy of the wildfires cemented the need to leave.
“It’s just been too sad,” she says.
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It wasn’t exactly how Cindy and Bob Curler envisioned their wedding night.
Unable to get back to their Lahaina hotel Tuesday as wildfires swallowed the town, their driver was forced to take them to the garage where he parks his limousine. The newlyweds shared a couch for the night, her in her strapless lace gown, him in his crisp blue suit.
Just hours earlier, the Pittsburgh couple had strolled Lahaina’s streets, passing the 150-year-old banyan tree and popping in quaint shops.
There were hiccups as they prepared for their ceremony, but nothing that alarmed them. The power had been knocked out at Lahaina Shores Beach Resort, where they were staying, and they could see flames in the mountains. Winds were “hellacious,” 46-year-old Bob said, but flames did not appear close.
The two heard no warnings, so they pressed forward with their elopement plans, driving south to a beach just past Wailea, where they exchanged vows under perfect blue skies. There was still no word of disaster, so they celebrated with a dinner at a nearby resort.
“We didn’t know that the town was burning,” Bob said.
Their driver tried to get them back to Lahaina, but roads were choked with traffic. Inching along, seeing fire spreading by the highway, they changed course, heading for the garage at 2 a.m.
It wasn’t until morning that they saw photos of Lahaina’s destruction and realized they were blessed to have escaped. Their hotel appears to have been spared the worst, but they haven’t been able to return. They know it’s nothing compared to the losses others are suffering.
“Yes it was our wedding day and night but that’s only one night for us,” Cindy said. “These people are impacted for the rest of their lives”
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Associated Press writers Andrew Selsky in Bend, Oregon, and Beatrice Dupuy in New York contributed to this report.
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Maui resident describes fleeing devastating wildfires, says he wasn’t told to evacuate
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They lost everything in the Paradise fire. Now they’re reliving their grief as fires rage in Hawaii
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Melissa Crick was heartbroken this week while watching videos on her phone of people fleeing from a fast-moving wildfire in Hawaii.
“Sending love and support from Paradise, California,” Crick commented on one woman’s social media post.
To Crick’s surprise, the woman wrote back. She knew Paradise — the small Northern California city in the Sierra Nevada foothills that was mostly destroyed by a wildfire in 2018. The woman told Crick her support meant a lot to her.
“That was a really heavy moment,” Crick told The Associated Press.
Lahaina, Hawaii, is a tropical paradise on the northwest coast of Maui. But wildfires ravaging the region have forever linked it to another Paradise, this one in California. The two small towns have the grim distinction of experiencing the two deadliest wildfires in U.S. history — tragedies that played out in a remarkably similar way.
“It’s not what we want to be remembered for,” Crick said.
Both blazes started in the overnight hours when it’s difficult to warn people, and moved quickly, leaving people with very little time to flee. Both places were isolated, with few roads leading in or out. The California fire killed at least 85 people and destroyed more than 18,000 structures. The Hawaii fire has so far killed more than 50 people and destroyed more than 1,000 buildings.
Most people would think a place like Paradise — located in the forests of wildfire-prone California — wouldn’t share a lot of similarities with a small town in Hawaii, a state known for its lush landscapes.
But the two places have more in common than you would think, especially when it comes to wildfires, said Hugh Safford, a fire and vegetation ecologist at the University of California-Davis. The wildfire risks for both places have been well known for years, especially as a changing climate has ushered in hotter, drier seasons that have made wildfires more intense, he noted.
“I’m not at all surprised that Hawaii has had a fire like this,” Safford said. “It was just a matter of time.”
As images filled news reports from Hawaii this week, Paradise was one of the only other places in the U.S. where people truly knew what it was like. It wasn’t a good feeling, residents say.
“It immediately triggers, for all of us … the emotions. It’s remembering the fear,” said Steve “Woody” Culleton, a member of the Paradise Town Council who lost his home in the 2018 fire. “It’s a tremendous sense of sadness, and you try to push it down.”
At the Paradise Rotary Club meeting on Wednesday, members acknowledged the Hawaii wildfire with a moment of silence. But they quickly moved on to how they could help.
Pam Gray, a Rotary Club member who lost her home in the 2018 fire, said the local club received more than $2.1 million in donations in the weeks after the blaze. The club used the money to hand out gift cards to people and pay for things such as tree removal. Now, Gray said, the club will be looking to return the favor to Hawaii.
“This whole community of people experienced what we did. If we continue to wallow in it every day, all day, then we can’t get better and our community can’t get better and we cannot help anyone else,” she said. “We went through that experience for a reason. And I believe it was to help other people.”
But others, including Laura Smith, have not felt an urge yet to jump in and help. Smith lost her home and most everything she owned in the 2018 fire. She said it was so overwhelming, it felt like she was “living in a lion’s mouth.”
“My sense is that the folks there just need space to process what just happened to them and to not be overflowing with platitudes with how everything is going to be fine, because it certainly will not be fine for a long time,” Smith said. “I mean, I am sure that they’ll recover. We did. I have. My kids have. But it’s still a wound that we struggle with sometimes.”
In Paradise on Wednesday, hundreds of people showed up for a ceremony to celebrate the opening of a new, state-of-the art building at the local high school. The school was one of the few places that did not burn in the 2018 fire, becoming an anchor of sorts for the community’s rebuilding efforts.
The school library displayed various yearbooks from past classes, allowing alumni a chance to remember happier times. Conversations soon drifted to the Hawaii fire, and then inevitably back to the Paradise fire, said Crick, who attended the event as president of the Paradise Unified School District school board.
Crick couldn’t help but wonder: Would the survivors of the Hawaii wildfires gather in five years to peruse their own past?
“What does it look like for their community?” she asked. “How do we support somebody even more secluded than we were when our fire happened?”
Mayor Greg Bolin said everyone he spoke to at the Paradise recovery event said their minds were on the victims in Hawaii.
“You know what their life is going to be like. … You know how hard and how difficult times are going to be,” he said. “But if they stay with it, there is hope on the other side. It does come together. And our town is coming back.”
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Maui wildfires death toll at 55 as warning sirens’ silence questioned
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Maui residents who made desperate escapes from oncoming flames, some on foot, asked why Hawaii’s famous emergency warning system didn’t alert them as fires raced toward their homes.
Hawaii emergency management records show no indication that warning sirens were triggered before a devastating wildfire killed at least 55 people and wiped out most of the historic town of Lahaina, officials confirmed Thursday.
The toll is expected to rise as crews search scorched areas for survivors and those who lost their lives.
Tiffany Kidder Winn / AP
Lahaina business owner J.D. Hessemer said he decided to evacuate early in the morning before the fires reached the town, without ever hearing an emergency alert.
“The winds were just getting out of control. Power lines were down everywhere and we had to reroute,” Hessemer told “CBS Mornings” on Friday. “…We just decided it was not safe to stay around for the day.”
He said he received no official warning or instructions to evacuate.
“I received nothing — at no point in time. I got nothing on my phone,” he said.
The blaze is already the state’s deadliest natural disaster since a 1960 tsunami that killed 61 people on the Big Island and deadliest U.S. wildfire since the 2018 Camp Fire in California, which killed at least 85 people and laid waste to the town of Paradise.
“Lahaina, with a few rare exceptions, has been burned down,” Gov. Josh Green said during a Thursday news conference after walking the ruins of the town with Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen. “Without a doubt, it feels like a bomb was dropped on Lahaina.”
Green said “hundreds of homes” have been burned and estimated over 1,000 buildings have been destroyed.
“It’s a heartbreaking day,” Green said. “Without a doubt, what we saw is catastrophic.”
He described it as “likely the largest natural disaster” ever in Hawaii.
According to CBS Honolulu affiliate KGMB-TV, Green went on to say, “When you see the full extent of the destruction in Lahaina, it will shock you. … All of the buildings virtually are gonna have to be rebuilt. It will be a new Lahaina that Maui builds in its own image, with its own values.”
“What we’re telling you is we will rebuild,” he added.
Officials were unable to provide an estimate on the number of people missing. “Honestly, we don’t know,” Maui County Police Chief John Pelletier told reporters.
KGMB, citing authorities, said three large fires on Maui, including the one in Lahaina, were still active, but firefighters appeared to be focusing mostly on hotspots after airdrops conducted for the first time on Wednesday, when winds began to die down, were finally able to beat down flames. On Thursday morning, Maui County said the Lahaina wildfire was 80% contained.
Almost 11,000 homes and businesses across Maui had no power as of 12:45 a.m. Hawaii time Friday, according to PowerOutage.us. The local utility, Hawaiian Electric, said it was “asking West Maui customers without power to prepare for extended outages that could last several weeks in some areas.”
PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP via Getty Images
Silent warning system
Hawaii boasts what the state describes as the largest integrated outdoor all-hazard public safety warning system in the world, with about 400 sirens positioned across the island chain to alert people to various natural disasters and other threats. But many of Lahaina’s survivors said in interviews at evacuation centers that they didn’t hear any sirens and only realized they were in danger when they saw flames or heard explosions nearby.
Dustin Kaleiopu fled Lahaina with his grandfather. He told CBS News on Thursday that there wasn’t any warning about the fire and they left with only what they were wearing.
The smoke was starting to come through our windows. By the time we got in our car, our neighbor’s yard was on fire. There were strangers in our yard with their water hoses trying to put fires out,” Kaleiopu said.
William Bugle, 76, told CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti he was burned on his arm when the roof blew off his house and he was hit by red-hot shingles. “It went from like nothing to, like, I felt this heat, this tremendous heat,” Bugle said.
Thomas Leonard, a 70-year-old retired mailman from Lahaina, didn’t know about the fire until he smelled smoke. Power and cell phone service had both gone out earlier that day, leaving the town with no real-time information about the danger.
He tried to leave in his Jeep but had to abandon the vehicle and run to the shore when cars nearby began exploding. He hid behind a seawall for hours, the wind blowing hot ash and cinders over him.
Firefighters eventually arrived and escorted Leonard and other survivors through the flames to safety.
Hawaii Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Adam Weintraub told The Associated Press on Thursday that the department’s records don’t show that Maui’s warning sirens were triggered on Tuesday. Instead, the county used emergency alerts sent to mobile phones, televisions and radio stations, Weintraub said.
It’s not clear if those alerts were sent before widespread power and cellular outages cut off most communication to Lahaina.
Communications have been spotty across Maui, with 911, landline and cellular service failing at times. Power was also out in parts of the island.
Mengshin Lin for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Fueled by a dry summer and strong winds from Hurricane Dora passing far to the south, the fire started Tuesday and took Maui by surprise, racing through parched brush covering the island and then flattening homes and anything else in its path.
Maui Fire Department Chief Brad Ventura said the fire moved so quickly from brush to neighborhood that it was impossible to get messages to the emergency management agencies responsible for emergency alerts.
Lahaina was at high risk
Lahaina’s wildfire risk was well known. Maui County’s hazard mitigation plan, last updated in 2020, identified Lahaina and other West Maui communities as having frequent wildfire ignitions and a large number of buildings at risk of wildfire damage.
The report also noted that West Maui had the island’s highest population of people living in multi-unit housing, the second-highest rate of households without a vehicle and the highest rate of non-English speakers.
“This may limit the population’s ability to receive, understand and take expedient action during hazard events,” the plan noted.
Maui’s firefighting efforts may also have been hampered by a small staff, said Bobby Lee, the president of the Hawaii Firefighters Association. There are 65 firefighters at most working at any given time in Maui County, and they’re responsible for fighting fires on three islands – Maui, Molokai and Lanai – he said.
Those crews have about 13 fire engines and two ladder trucks, but they’re all designed for on-road use. The department doesn’t have any off-road vehicles, he said.
That means fire crews can’t attack brush fires thoroughly before they reach roads or populated areas, Lee explained. The high winds caused by Dora made that extremely difficult, he said.
“You’re basically dealing with trying to fight a blowtorch,” Lee said. “You’ve got to be careful – you don’t want to get caught downwind from that because you’re going to get run over in a wind-driven fire of that magnitude.”
Mandatory evacuation orders were in place for Lahaina residents, Bissen noted, while tourists in hotels were told to shelter in place so emergency vehicles could get into the area.
Mengshin Lin for The Washington Post via Getty Images
The mayor said downed power poles added to the chaos as people attempted to flee Lahaina by cutting off two important roads out of town. Speaking at the Thursday news conference, Bissen said 29 poles fell with live wires still attached, and leaving only the narrow highway toward Kahakuloa.
Tourists were advised to stay away, and thousands of people have crowded airports to leave the island. Officials turned the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu into an assistance center, stocking it with water, food, and volunteers who help visitors arrange travel home.
KGMB reports that Oprah Winfrey, a part-time Maui resident, visited evacuees Thursday at the War Memorial Gymnasium in Maui. The station says she’s one of Maui’s biggest private landowners, with more than 1,000 acres in Kula and Hana. It was unclear whether any of her land was damaged from the wildfires.
President Biden declared a major disaster on Maui. Traveling in Utah on Thursday, he pledged that the federal response will ensure that “anyone who’s lost a loved one, or whose home has been damaged or destroyed, is going to get help immediately.” Mr. Biden promised to streamline requests for assistance and said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was “surging emergency personnel” on the island.
Mayor Bissen previously said officials hadn’t yet begun investigating the immediate cause of the fires, but officials did point to the combination of dry conditions, low humidity and high winds.
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Golfer With Hawaii Ties Vows To Donate To Maui Fire Recovery Efforts In A Big Way
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MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Collin Morikawa is pledging $1,000 for every birdie he makes the next three PGA Tour events to help with relief for the deadly wildfires in Hawaii. For him, it’s personal.
His grandparents were born in Lahaina, the historic town on Maui where Front Street and all its restaurants and shops have been obliterated by the wind-swept fires that have claimed at least 36 lives. He still has relatives on Maui, though most have moved to Oahu.
“I think they’re all right, but just to hear … woke up this morning, just checking the news, and to see how many people have passed away from that, yeah. I’m at a loss for words,” Morikawa said.
Morikawa, who won the PGA Championship and the British Open within two years after graduating from California-Berkeley, began his bid Thursday with six birdies in his opening round of 65 in the FedEx St. Jude Championship.
He posted his plans on Instagram on Thursday morning, and by the end of the day had decided to send the money raised to Maui United Way and World Central Kitchen to help survivors on Maui and elsewhere in Hawaii.
Morikawa grew up in the Los Angeles area, but he said his father used to spend summers in Lahaina because his grandparents were there. The Morikawa Restaurant closed several years ago, though a local man happened to find a matchbook from the restaurant on eBay a few years back and worked through the PGA Tour and Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua to get it to him.
“It’s devastating what we’ve been seeing. The before-and-after photos are just heartbreaking, knowing that my entire dad’s side of the family grew up there,” he said. “My grandparents were born in Lahaina. We had the restaurant out there. That’s what the photo was. We went there as kids. It’s a special place.
“It’s amazing how many things you take for granted really in life, and when you see that, it’s just heartbreaking.”
Morikawa is hopeful other people would join in on his pledge by contributing for his birdies. He still has 11 rounds left, and said that one friend texted him that maybe he could reach $100,000.
“Look, it’s one of the best places in the world we travel to year in and year out to go to Kapalua, play golf there,” he said. “I know I’m going to ask my sponsors, I’m going to ask people that I know just to help out. Anything helps — per birdie I make, whatever you can afford, whatever you want to put in. I’m going to be pushing hard to make those birdies, and hopefully everyone else can reach out and help out as much as they can.”
AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
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Fast-moving Hawaii fires will take a heavy toll on the state’s environment
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The fast-moving wildfires that raked Maui this week took a heavy toll on humans and property, killing dozens of people and devastating the historic town of Lahaina. But their effects on the landscape and environment in Hawaii are also expected to be significant.
Experts say the fires are likely to transform the landscape in unwanted ways including hastening erosion, sending sediment into waterways and degrading coral that is critically important to the islands, marine life and the humans who live nearby.
A look at some of those potential impacts:
CORAL
The wildfires struck Hawaii just as Jamison Gove, a Honolulu-based oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was publishing research in Nature on Hawaii coral reefs’ recovering from a 2015 marine heat wave. That work highlighted the threat to coral from land-based contaminants running off into the ocean.
Gove said Thursday that burning homes, commercial structures and cars and trucks would make any runoff worse by concentrating synthetic materials in the stream.
“It’s not a major leap to suggest when all that material is even more heavily concentrated in a small area, that the consequences would undoubtedly be more severe if and when it’s in the ocean,” Gove said. He noted that Lahaina’s coastal location meant “a minimal distance” for the materials to reach the ocean.
“Coral reefs provide coastal protection, they provide fisheries, they support cultural practices in Hawaii,” Gove said. “And the loss of reefs just has such detrimental consequences to the ecosystem.”
DRINKING WATER
One casualty of the fire could be clean drinking water.
Andrew Whelton, a professor of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering at Purdue University, said the wildfires can contaminate private wells and water systems and even municipal water systems.
The private wells, which can be shallow and sometimes have little more protection than a board or well house, are easily overcome by fire and contaminated, Whelton said.
Municipal systems also can be affected when fire damages distribution systems. Whelton described a scenario in which pressure drops could lead to contaminated water backing up, sucking in smoke, soot, ash and vapors that penetrate plastics, gaskets and other materials to create a future problem.
“They leach out slowly into the clean water you’ve just put in, making that clean water unsafe,” Whelton said.
LANDSCAPE AND SOIL CHANGES
Elizabeth Pickett, co-executive director of the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, a nonprofit working with communities to prevent and mitigate fires, lamented the changes wrought by fire.
Invasive and fire-prone grass species have moved in over time and during a fire they can burn into native forests, which means the forests are replaced by more grass, Pickett said. The soil burns and sloughs off, leading to massive post-fire erosion that smothers coral, impacts fisheries and reduces the quality of the ocean water, she said.
The state is windy and the dust blows for years, harming human health, she added.
“When you lose your soil, it’s really hard to restore and replant. And then the only thing that can really handle living there in many cases are more of those invasive species,” Pickett said. “It’s systemic. Air, land and water are all impacted.”
Paul Steblein, the wildland fire science coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey, said there are a number of fire-adapted invasive species. If that is what grows back following a wildfire, then fires can become more common.
Those invasive grasses are also growing faster during the periods that are wetter due to climate change and become easy to burn when it dries out, Steblein said.
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Maui residents had little warning before flames overtook town. At least 53 people died.
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LAHAINA, Hawaii — Maui residents who made desperate escapes from flames, some on foot, asked why Hawaii’s famous emergency warning system didn’t alert them as fires raced toward their homes, in interviews at evacuation centers Thursday.
Hawaii emergency management records show no indication that the warning sirens were triggered before a devastating wildfire killed at least 53 people and wiped out a historic town, officials confirmed Thursday.
Hawaii boasts what the state describes as the largest integrated outdoor all-hazard public safety warning system in the world, with about 400 sirens positioned across the island chain. But many of Lahaina’s survivors said they didn’t hear any sirens and only realized they were in danger when they saw flames or heard explosions nearby.
Thomas Leonard, a 70-year-old retired mailman from Lahaina, didn’t know about the fire until he smelled smoke. Power and cell phone service had both gone out earlier that day, leaving the town with no real-time information about the danger. He tried to leave in his Jeep, but had to abandon the vehicle and run to the shore when cars nearby began exploding. He hid behind a sea wall for hours, the wind blowing hot ash and cinders over him.
Firefighters eventually arrived and escorted Leonard and other survivors on foot through the flames to safety.
Hawaii Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Adam Weintraub told The Associated Press on Thursday that the department’s records don’t show that Maui’s warning sirens were triggered on Tuesday. Instead, the county used emergency alerts sent to mobile phones, televisions and radio stations, Weintraub said.
It’s not clear if those alerts were sent before widespread power and cellular outages cut off most communication to Lahaina.
Fueled by a dry summer and strong winds from a passing hurricane, the fire started Tuesday and took Maui by surprise, racing through parched brush covering the island and then flattening homes and anything else that lay in its path.
The wildfire is already the state’s deadliest natural disaster since a 1960 tsunami, which killed 61 people on the Big Island. During a Thursday press conference, Gov. Josh Green said the death toll will likely rise further as search and rescue operations continue.
It’s also the deadliest U.S. wildfire since the 2018 Camp Fire in California, which killed at least 85 people and laid waste to the town of Paradise.
Lahaina’s wildfire risk was well known. Maui County’s hazard mitigation plan, last updated in 2020, identified Lahaina and other West Maui communities as having frequent wildfire ignitions and a large number of buildings at risk of wildfire damage. West Maui was also identified as having the island’s highest population of people living in multi-unit housing, the second-highest rate of households without a vehicle, and the highest rate of non-English speakers.
“This may limit the population’s ability to receive, understand and take expedient action during hazard events,” the plan noted.
Maui’s firefighting efforts may also have been hampered by a small staff, said Bobby Lee, the president of the Hawaii Firefighters Association. There are a maximum of 65 firefighters working at any given time in Maui County, and they are responsible for fighting fires on three islands — Maui, Molokai and Lanai — he said.
Those crews have about 13 fire engines and two ladder trucks, but they are all designed for on-road use. The department does not have any off-road vehicles, which would allow crews to attack brush fires thoroughly before they reach roads or populated areas, he said.
That forces fire crews to wait for brush fires to reach an area where they can attack it with fire engines and other equipment, he said. The high winds caused by Hurricane Dora made that extremely difficult, he said.
“You’re basically dealing with trying to fight a blowtorch,” he said. “You’ve got to be careful — you don’t want to get caught downwind from that, because you’re going to get run over in a wind-driven fire of that magnitude.”
Maui Fire Department Chief Brad Ventura said the fire moved so quickly from brush to neighborhood that it was impossible to get communications to emergency management agencies responsible for getting warnings out.
Mandatory evacuation orders were in place for Lahaina residents, Mayor Richard Bissen noted, while tourists in hotels were told to shelter in place so that emergency vehicles could get into the area.
Marlon Vasquez, a 31-year-old cook from Guatemala who came to the U.S. in January 2022, said that when he heard fire alarms, it was already too late to flee in his car.
“I opened the door, and the fire was almost on top of us,” he said from an evacuation center at a gymnasium. “We ran and ran. We ran almost the whole night and into the next day, because the fire didn’t stop.”
Vasquez and his brother Eduardo escaped via roads that were clogged with vehicles full of people. The smoke was so toxic that he vomited. He said he’s not sure his roommates and neighbors made it to safety.
Lahaina residents Kamuela Kawaakoa and Iiulia Yasso said they only had time to grab a change of clothes and run with their 6-year-old son as the bushes around them caught fire.
“We barely made it out,” Kawaakoa, 34, said at an evacuation shelter, still unsure if anything was left of their apartment.
As the family fled, they called 911 when they saw the Hale Mahaolu senior living facility across the road erupt in flames.
Chelsey Vierra’s great-grandmother, Louise Abihai, was living at Hale Mahaolu, and the family doesn’t know if she got out. “She doesn’t have a phone. She’s 97 years old,” Vierra said Thursday. “She can walk. She is strong.”
Relatives are monitoring shelter lists and calling the hospital. “We got to find our loved one, but there’s no communication here,” said Vierra, who fled the flames. “We don’t know who to ask about where she went.”
Communications have been spotty on the island, with 911, landline and cellular service failing at times. Power was also out in parts of Maui.
Tourists were advised to stay away, and about 11,000 flew out of Maui on Wednesday with at least 1,500 more expected to leave Thursday, according to Ed Sniffen, state transportation director. Officials turned the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu into an assistance center for tourists and locals, stocking it with water, food, and volunteers who help visitors arrange travel home.
President Joe Biden declared a major disaster on Maui. Traveling in Utah on Thursday, he pledged that the federal response will ensure that “anyone who’s lost a loved one, or whose home has been damaged or destroyed, is going to get help immediately.” Biden promised to streamline requests for assistance and said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was “surging emergency personnel” on the island.
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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Sinco Kelleher reported from Honolulu, Rush from Kahului and Boone from Boise, Idaho. Associated Press writers Chris Weber in Los Angeles, Nick Perry in Wellington, New Zealand; Andrew Selsky in Bend, Oregon; Bobby Caina Calvan and Beatrice Dupuy in New York; Chris Megerian in Salt Lake City, Utah; and Audrey McAvoy in Wailuku, Hawaii contributed.
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‘We are heartsick’: Death toll from Maui wildfires rises to at least 53
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LAHAINA, Hawaii — A search of the wildfire devastation on the Hawaiian island of Maui on Thursday revealed a wasteland of obliterated neighborhoods and landmarks charred beyond recognition, as the death toll rose to at least 53 and survivors told harrowing tales of narrow escapes with only the clothes on their backs.
A flyover of historic Lahaina showed entire neighborhoods that had been a vibrant vision of color and island life reduced to gray ash. Block after block was nothing but rubble and blackened foundations, including along famous Front Street, where tourists shopped and dined just days ago. Boats in the harbor were scorched, and smoke hovered over the town, which dates to the 1700s and is the biggest community on the island’s west side.
“Lahaina, with a few rare exceptions, has been burned down,” Hawaii Gov. Josh Green told The Associated Press. More than 1,000 structures were destroyed by fires that were still burning, he said.
The death toll will likely rise as search and rescue operations continue, Green added, and officials expect it will become the state’s deadliest natural disaster since a 1961 tsunami killed 61 people on the Big Island.
“We are heartsick,” Green said.
Tiffany Kidder Winn’s gift store Whaler’s Locker, which is one of the town’s oldest shops, was among the many businesses destroyed. As she assessed the damage Thursday, she came upon a line of burned-out vehicles, some with charred bodies inside them.
“It looked like they were trying to get out, but were stuck in traffic and couldn’t get off Front Street,” she said. She later spotted a body leaning against a seawall.
Winn said the destruction was so widespread, “I couldn’t even tell where I was because all the landmarks were gone.”
Fueled by a dry summer and strong winds from a passing hurricane, the fire started Tuesday and took Maui by surprise, racing through parched growth covering the island and then feasting on homes and anything else that lay in its path.
The official death toll of 53 as of Thursday makes this the deadliest U.S. wildfire since the 2018 Camp Fire in California, which killed at least 85 people and laid waste to the town of Paradise. The Hawaii toll could rise, though, as rescuers reach parts of the island that had been inaccessible due to the three ongoing fires, including the one in Lahaina that was 80% contained on Thursday, according to a Maui County news release. More than 270 structures have been damaged or destroyed, and dozens of people have been injured, including some critically.
“We are still in life preservation mode. Search and rescue is still a primary concern,” said Adam Weintraub, a spokesperson for Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.
Search and rescue teams still won’t be able to access certain areas until the fire lines are secure and they’re sure they’ll be able to get to those areas safely, Weintraub added.
The flames left some people with mere minutes to act and led some to flee into the ocean. A Lahaina man, Bosco Bae, posted video on Facebook from Tuesday night that showed fire burning nearly every building on a street as sirens blared and windblown sparks raced by. Bae, who said he was one of the last people to leave the town, was evacuated to the island’s main airport and was waiting to be allowed to return home.
Marlon Vasquez, a 31-year-old cook from Guatemala who came to the U.S. in January 2022, said that when he heard the fire alarms, it was already too late to flee in his car.
“I opened the door and the fire was almost on top of us,” he told The Associated Press on Thursday from an evacuation center at a gymnasium. “We ran and ran. We ran almost the whole night and into the next day, because the fire didn’t stop.”
Vasquez and his brother Eduardo escaped via roads that were clogged with vehicles full of people. The smoke was so toxic that he vomited. He said he’s not sure his roommates and neighbors made it to safety.
Lahaina residents Kamuela Kawaakoa and Iiulia Yasso described their harrowing escape under smoke-filled skies. The couple and their 6-year-old son got back to their apartment after a quick dash to the supermarket for water, and only had time to grab a change of clothes and run as the bushes around them caught fire.
“We barely made it out,” Kawaakoa, 34, said at an evacuation shelter, still unsure if anything was left of their apartment.
As the family fled, they called 911 when they saw the Hale Mahaolu senior living facility across the road erupt in flames.
Chelsey Vierra’s grandmother, Louise Abihai, was living at Hale Mahaolu, and the family doesn’t know if she got out. “She doesn’t have a phone. She’s 97 years old,” Vierra said Thursday. “She can walk. She is strong.”
Relatives are monitoring shelter lists and calling the hospital. “We got to find our loved one, but there’s no communication here,” said Vierra, who fled the flames. “We don’t know who to ask about where she went.”
Communications have been spotty on the island, with 911, landline and cellular service failing at times. Power was also out in parts of Maui.
Tourists were advised to stay away, and about 11,000 flew out of Maui on Wednesday with at least 1,500 more expected to leave Thursday, according to Ed Sniffen, state transportation director. Officials prepared the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu to take in the thousands who have been displaced.
In coastal Kihei, southeast of Lahaina, wide swaths of ground glowed red with embers Wednesday night as flames continued to chew through trees and buildings. Gusty winds blew sparks over a black and orange patchwork of charred earth and still-crackling hot spots.
The fires were fanned by strong winds from Hurricane Dora passing far to the south. It’s the latest in a series of disasters caused by extreme weather around the globe this summer. Experts say climate change is increasing the likelihood of such events.
Wildfires aren’t unusual in Hawaii, but the weather of the past few weeks created the fuel for a devastating blaze and, once ignited, the high winds created the disaster, said Thomas Smith an associate professor in Environmental Geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Hawaii’s Big Island is also currently seeing blazes, Mayor Mitch Roth said, although there were no reports of injuries or destroyed homes there.
With communications hampered, it was difficult for many to check in with friends and family members. Some people were posting messages on social media. Maui officials opened a Family Assistance Center at the Kahului Community Center for people looking for the missing.
Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, of the Hawaii State Department of Defense, told reporters Wednesday night that officials were working to get communications restored, distribute water and possibly add law enforcement personnel. He said National Guard helicopters had dropped 150,000 gallons of water on the fires.
The Coast Guard said it rescued 14 people who jumped into the water to escape the flames and smoke.
Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen Jr. said Wednesday that officials hadn’t yet begun investigating the immediate cause of the fires.
President Joe Biden declared a major disaster on Maui. Traveling in Utah on Thursday, he pledged that the federal response will ensure that “anyone who’s lost a loved one, or whose home has been damaged or destroyed, is going to get help immediately.” Biden promised to streamline requests for assistance and said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was “surging emergency personnel” on the island.
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These factors are making it hard to combat the deadly Maui wildfires | CNN
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CNN
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The wind-whipped fires in Maui spread swiftly and created a deadly tinderbox, overwhelming residents and local officials in one of the nation’s deadliest wildfires.
“It’s very strange to hear about severe wildfires in Hawaii – a wet, tropical island – but strange events are becoming more common with climate change,” Jennifer Marlon, a research scientist and lecturer at the Yale School of the Environment, told CNN.
Fueled by a combination of strong winds and dry conditions – and complicated by the island’s geography – the fires have killed at least 36 people.
“For those of us who’ve been working on this problem, it just makes us feel sick,” said Clay Trauernicht, an assistant specialist who studies tropical fire at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Maui’s wildfire appears to be one of the deadliest in modern US history. The fire already ranks as the second deadliest in the past 100 years, trailing California’s Camp fire, which killed 85 people in November 2018, according to CalFire.
Trauernicht said it was by far the deadliest wildfire in Hawaii’s history.
These are some factors making it difficult to combat the fires that have plunged a state known for its stunning natural beauty into an unprecedented crisis:
Drought worsened in Hawaii over the past week, leading to fire spread, according to the US Drought Monitor released Thursday. Severe level drought conditions in Maui County ticked up to 16% from 5% last week, while statewide moderate drought levels jumped to 14% from 6%.
Dried-out land and vegetation can provide fuel for wildfires, which then can swiftly turn deadly if strong winds help fan the flames toward communities.
“It’s more a fuels problem than a climate problem – which means that it’s a problem we can tackle,” Trauernicht said in a phone interview.
“There are tangible actions that we could be taking that would reduce the risk of something like this happening in the future,” he added, referring to measures such as the creation of fuelbreaks to reduce fire-prone vegetation and support for agricultural land use.
“It’s a priority when the fires are burning. But at that point, it’s too late.”
While scientists try to fully understand how the climate crisis will affect Hawaii, they have said drought will get worse as global temperatures rise: Warmer temperatures increase the amount of water the atmosphere can absorb – which then dries out the landscape.
Drought conditions are becoming more extreme and common in Hawaii and other Pacific Islands, according to the Fourth US National Climate Assessment, released in 2018. Rainfall has generally been decreasing in Hawaii over time, with the number of consecutive dry days increasing, scientists noted in the report.
And the climate crisis has caused droughts that previously may have occurred only once every decade to now happen 70% more frequently, global scientists reported in 2021.
“Combining abundant fuels with heat, drought, and strong wind gusts is a perfect recipe for out-of-control fires,” Marlon said by email.
“But this is what climate change is doing – it’s super-charging extreme weather. This is yet another example of what human-caused climate change increasingly looks like.”
Evacuation orders in parts of Hawaii as wildfires grow
Hurricane Dora, a fast-moving and powerful Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 140 mph, isn’t helping matters.
As the storm roared south of Hawaii, a strong high-pressure system stayed in place to the north, with the two forces combining to produce “very strong and damaging winds,” according to the National Weather Service.
“These strong winds coupled with low humidity levels are producing dangerous fire weather conditions” through Wednesday afternoon, the weather service said.
The high winds, ongoing drought conditions and dry relative humidity are “ingredients to spark those fires and to fan the flames,” CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam said.
“The problem is that this wind – similar to, let’s say, Santa Ana winds in Southern California – is that it dries out and it warms up as it (travels down) the mountains, and it creates these very dry, timber-like conditions,” he said.
Hurricane Lane in 2018 was also associated with large fires on Maui and Oahu, noted Abby Frazier, a climatologist and geographer at Clark University in Massachusetts.
“Wildfire is a bigger issue in Hawaii than many people may realize,” Frazier said via email from Hawaii, where she has been working on a research project in Oahu.
“During the wet season, fuels are built up and then dry out over the dry season,” she added. “When you combine these dry fuels with the high winds and low humidity we have right now from Hurricane Dora, we have extremely dangerous fire weather.”
Another compounding factor is El Niño, Frazier said. The climate pattern originates in the Pacific Ocean along the equator and impacts weather all over the world.
“This means higher than usual hurricane activity in the central Pacific this summer,” she wrote.
“While we tend to see wetter conditions during El Nino summers (which builds up fire fuels), Hawaii should expect drought conditions likely this winter, which will dry out the fuels and usually leads to an earlier start to our fire season for next year.”
A hurricane is fueling wildfires in Hawaii. Meteorologist explains how
Nonnative species now cover nearly a quarter of Hawaii’s total land area, and invasive grasses and shrubs become highly flammable in the dry season, Trauernicht said.
Hawaii also has lost large plantations and ranches, with fire-prone grasses overtaking fallow lands, he said.
“When plantations were active, firefighters would show up on scene … people would be there opening the gates, all the roads were maintained, there was water infrastructure and equipment. And they would have support from the people working on these plantations,” Trauernicht said.
“As that has changed, and land use has changed. It’s all on the firefighters right now.”
Hawaii also has suffered from dramatic shifts in rainfall patterns.
The area burned each year in Hawaii is now about 1% of the state’s total land area – comparable to and often exceeding the 12 Western states on the mainland where fires are most common, according to Trauernicht and the Pacific Fire Exchange.
The geography of Hawaii – an island chain in the Pacific – and limited firefighting resources also complicate efforts.
Personnel at the state Division of Forestry and Wildlife are primarily natural resource managers, foresters, biologists and technicians – not full-time wildland firefighters, according to the agency website.
“West Maui is kind of a perfect example – one highway through the whole place,” Trauernicht told CNN. “Our resources are limited to what’s on island. The resources … are going to be spread thin.”
Fewer than 300 firefighting personnel responded to the state’s second-largest fire, on the Big Island in 2021, Trauernicht said.
“If you compare that to the mainland, there would have been probably a couple of thousand firefighters,” he said.
“That gives you a sense of the kind of … limitations that we have here. This fire right now, I guarantee it, anyone who’s available to respond is responding. We don’t really have the ability to definitely bring in resources from other states. That’s not happening.”
By Thursday, meanwhile, the wildfires had killed at least 36 people on the island, compared to six deaths reported just a day earlier.
“I think this is going to be far worse than anything we’ve ever seen, unfortunately,” Trauernicht said.
Despite warnings it seems many were taken by surprise.
“The National Weather Service issued a kind of heads up. We had a few days lead time about the weather conditions,” Trauernicht said.
“We anticipated the high winds and dry conditions. But managing fuels at the scale in which we need to, those are actions that need to be taken at minimum months in advance of these fires and these conditions.”
Longer-term planning and prevention efforts are needed to fight the growth of invasive grasses and shrubs, Trauernicht said.
“This is something that we’ve been saying for decades,” he said. “We can create landscapes that are far less likely to burn, far less sensitive to these fluctuations in climate or in weather that create such dangerous conditions.
“We sort of owe it to these guys that are fighting this thing right now.”
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