Hawaii is still counting its dead after multiple meteor fires, one of which reduced a historic town on the island of Maui to rubble and threatens the worst natural disaster in the American archipelago’s recent history.
• Also read: Fires in Hawaii: Death toll rises to 80
• Also read: [PHOTOS] City of Lahaina, Hawaii decimated by wildfires
• Also read: “It’s horror what they experience”: Quebecers are back from Hawaii
Here’s what we know about the blaze, which caught many local residents by surprise.
How did the fires start?
Fire alerts were on throughout much of the Hawaiian archipelago as multiple fires broke out on Tuesday, but the cause is still unknown.
Authorities “were unable to determine what started the fires,” Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, the US military commander in Hawaii, said Wednesday night. An investigation has been launched.
The first blazes appeared around the almost completely destroyed historic town of Lahaina at dawn Tuesday.
AFP
A “bush fire” was reported “at 6:37 a.m.,” according to Maui County. Shortly after 9am it was initially stated that the fire was 100% under control, but a resumption of fire was announced in the afternoon.
At that time, there were other fires elsewhere on Maui, and the flames spread very quickly. The people of Lahaina were surprised: according to the Coast Guard, a hundred people threw themselves into the sea to escape the fire.
Bad crisis management?
The Lahaina fire killed at least 80 people, making it one of the worst natural disasters on the Hawaiian archipelago since the 1960s. And the number of victims is likely to increase.
Local residents are still stunned by the speed of the disaster.
“We saw the smoke from afar. When we got home after a minute or two, black smoke was pouring into the house,” Saraí Cruz told AFP. “We had to hurry, we took what we could, the important things. We drove the car, we saw the flames at the neighbors, their house was already on fire.
The former capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii today looks like a field of charred ruins: Lahaina is “80%” destroyed, according to archipelago governor Josh Green.
Questions about the management of the authorities arise. The sirens that were supposed to sound in the event of a fire were not activated, a spokesman for the agency responsible for crisis management in Hawaii confirmed to CNN.
How can the rate of fire be explained?
The flames were fueled by a cocktail of devastating conditions.
According to the US National Weather Service (NWS), they were fueled by strong winds exceeding 100 km/h. In particular, they were fed by Dora, a Category 4 hurricane that swept through the waters of the Pacific Ocean several hundred kilometers to the south.
Maui’s topography, an island with two volcanoes and several mountains in the middle and a fairly flat coastline, also played a role.
AFP
The gusts off the sea turned into “downdrafts” that “were pushed up the slopes of the island towards the city,” says Thomas Smith, professor of environmental geography at the London School of Economics.
These downdrafts are typically “dry and hot”, reducing vegetation moisture and making fires “extreme”.
The region itself was poised to burst into flames for two reasons.
Firstly because of a less rainy year than usual. According to the US Drought Monitor, western Maui, where Lahaina is located, is experiencing a “severe” to “moderate” drought.
Then due to the decline of agriculture on the island since the ’90s, according to Claytrauernicht, a fire specialist at the University of Hawaii.
The once manicured fields that could have slowed the fire have been replaced with “huge expanses of non-local abandoned vegetation,” he tweeted.
Has climate change played a role?
While it is always difficult to attribute a specific event to climate change, scientists regularly point out that global warming is increasing the frequency of extreme events.
AFP
The world just had its hottest July on record.
“Climate change is leading to warming of the atmosphere everywhere, […] so the same fire that would have been moderate a few decades ago will be more intense today,” summarizes Yadvinder Malhi, professor of ecosystem sciences at the University of Oxford.