SAM METZ and CLAIRE RUSH
Sun, August 13, 2023
Hawaii Fires
LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — When flames swept through western Maui, engulfing the town of Lahaina, residents saw toxic fumes spewing into the air as burning homes, pipes and cars combusted, transforming rubber, metal and plastic into poisonous, particulate matter-filled smoke.
Retired mailman and Vietnam veteran Thomas Leonard heard a boom as a propane tank at a nearby home exploded, leaving a cloud that looked like “a gigantic mushroom” in its wake.
Thirty-seven year old Mike Cicchino, who grew up on Maui, said he could tell how close the flames were based on how far away cars sounded as their gas tanks erupted. He and his family sought refuge in the ocean across a knee-high sea wall and as he helped others onto the rocks, his rib cage ached, his eyes were nearly swollen shut and he vomited.
“It was like a war,” Cicchino said.
About 46,000 residents and visitors have flown out of West Maui since the devastation became clear last week, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Officials are now mourning the deaths of more than 90 people and preparing the island, particularly Lahaina, for a long recovery.
In addition to lives lost, property damaged and a culture forever transformed, authorities are worried about returning to some parts of the island where toxic byproducts of the fire likely remain.
Residents of some parts of the island have begun returning home, finding melted cars, flattened homes and burnt elevator shafts rising from ashy lots where apartment buildings once stood. But even in places where the destruction has begun to subside, officials are warning residents that it remains too dangerous to return and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials are surveying the area for additional hazards.
“It is not safe. It is a hazardous area and that’s why experts are here,” Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said in a news conference Saturday. “We’re not doing anybody any favors by letting them back in there quickly, just so they can get sick.”
Hawaii’s state toxicologist Diana Felton told Hawaii Public Radio that it could take weeks or months to clean up the pollutants.
Officials like Bissen and Felton have taken their cue from scientists who warn that fires — even once extinguished in a particular neighborhood or area — can leave lasting health hazards, including in the air and drinking water.
Such lasting effects could prolong recovery, compound residents’ agony and complicate the return of the island’s tourism-driven economy.
Maui water officials warned Lahaina and Kula 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.
Though others have returned, some residents, like JP Mayoga, are electing to stay away. Mayoga said on Sunday that he, his wife and two daughters planned to stay at the hotel where he works north of Lahaina because they worry toxic debris now covering Lahaina might negatively impact members of the family with sensitive health.
“It’s safer than it is at home right now,” he said of the hotel.
Unlike factory pollution or forest fires where scientists have a strong grasp about the kind of toxins emitted, fires like the one in Maui can leave a less unpredictable trail of destruction in their wake. As towns like Lahaina burn, propane tanks explode, pipes melt and oil spills.
“When you burn people’s belongings, vehicles and boats, we don’t necessarily have a good understanding of what those chemicals are,” said Professor Andrew Whelton, the director of Purdue University's Center for Plumbing Safety. “When much of that infrastructure burns, it’s transformed into other materials that are never meant for human contact.”
Whelton said airborne pollutants from smoke often fall to the ground and can require removal by emergency response teams to ensure they aren't kicked up and inhaled as people return to the burn areas. Melted pipes can compromise the water supply, a concern reflected in the unsafe water alert issued Friday for upper Kula and Lahaina.
Though these concerns may be less apparent than charred trees and homes, the invisible hazards can often extend beyond burned areas to wherever smoke plumes have traveled.
“If you go back into some zones even where maybe all the fires have been put out, you can then be really exposed. If there’s dust and debris kicked up, you can get it in your eyes, on your hands or you can inhale it,” Whelton added, imploring people to wear protective gear, cover their arms and legs and follow evacuation orders.
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AP writer Matt Sedensky contributed. Metz reported from Salt Lake City.
CLAIRE RUSH, SETH BORENSTEIN and JENNIFER MCDERMOTT
Updated Thu, August 10, 2023
2 / 7
In this photo provided by Tiffany Kidder Winn, a man walks past wildfire wreckage on Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. The scene at one of Maui's tourist hubs on Thursday looked like a wasteland, with homes and entire blocks reduced to ashes as firefighters as firefighters battled the deadliest blaze in the U.S. in recent years.
Hawaii went from lush to bone dry and thus more fire-prone in a matter of just a few weeks — a key factor in a dangerous mix of conditions appear to have combined to make the wildfires blazing a path of destruction in Hawaii particularly damaging.
Experts say climate change is increasing the likelihood of these flash droughts as well as other extreme weather events like what's playing out on the island of Maui, where dozens of people have been killed and a historic tourist town was devastated.
“It's leading to these unpredictable or unforeseen combinations that we're seeing right now and that are fueling this extreme fire weather,” said Kelsey Copes-Gerbitz, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia's faculty of forestry. “What these ... catastrophic wildfire disasters are revealing is that nowhere is immune to the issue.”
Here's a look at the Maui fires, and what's behind them:
FLASH DROUGHTS
Flash droughts are so dry and hot that the air literally sucks moisture out of the ground and plants in a vicious cycle of hotter-and-drier that often leads to wildfires. And Hawaii's situation is a textbook case, two scientists told The Associated Press.
As of May 23, none of Maui was unusually dry; by the following week it was more than half abnormally dry. By June 13 it was two-thirds either abnormally dry or in moderate drought. And this week about 83% of the island is either abnormally dry or in moderate or severe drought, according to the U.S. drought monitor.
Maui experienced a two-category increase in drought severity in just three weeks from May to June, with that rapid intensification fitting the definition of a flash drought, said Jason Otkin, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Otkin co-authored an April study that shows that flash droughts are becoming more common as Earth warms by human-caused climate change. A 2016 flash drought was connected to unusual wildfires in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, he said.
Even in the past week there’s been “a quick acceleration” of that drought, said University of Virginia hydrologist Venkat Lakshmi. Flash droughts occur when the rain stops and it gets so hot that the atmosphere literally sucks moisture out of the ground and plants, making them more likely to catch fire.
“Plants are getting really, really dry,” Lakshmi said. “It's all related to water in some ways.”
“The most destructive fires usually occur during drought. If an area falls into drought quickly, that means there is a longer window of time for fires to occur,” Otkin said. “The risk for destructive fires could increase in the future if flash droughts become more common, as some studies have indicated.”
INVASIVE GRASSES
Elizabeth Pickett is the co-executive director of the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, a nonprofit that works with communities across Hawaii on wildfire prevention and mitigation. Pickett said there used to be massive tracts of land occupied by irrigated pineapples and sugar cane, and as those businesses declined and ceased, the lands were taken over by invasive, fire-prone grass species.
“The problem is at such a large scale, 26% of our state is now invaded by these grasses,” she said Thursday. “The landscape that has been invaded is steep, rocky and challenging to access. It’s a really hard landscape. You can’t just go with a lawn mower.”
When these grasses burn, they burn into the native forests, threatening endangered species, and then the forests are replaced by more grass, Pickett said.
WHAT'S FANNING THEM?
Major differences in air pressure drove unusually strong trade winds that fanned the destructive flames, according to meteorologists.
Trade winds are a normal feature of Hawaii's climate. They're caused when air moves from the high-pressure system pressure north of Hawaii — known as the North Pacific High — to the area of low pressure at the equator, to the south of the state.
But Hurricane Dora, which passed south of the islands this week, is exacerbating the low-pressure system and increasing the difference in air pressure to create “unusually strong trade winds,” said Genki Kino, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Honolulu.
Hawaii's state climatologist, Pao-Shin Chu, said he was caught off guard by the impact Dora had from roughly 500 miles (800 kilometers) away.
“Hurricane Dora is very far away from Hawaii, but you still have this fire occurrence here. So this is something we didn’t expect to see,” he said.
Strong winds, combined with low humidity and an abundance of dry vegetation that burns easily, can increase the danger of wildfire, even on a tropical island like Maui.
“If you have all of those conditions at the same time, it's often what the National Weather Service calls ‘red flag conditions,’” said Erica Fleishman, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University.
HOW CLIMATE CHANGE PLAYS A ROLE
“Climate change in many parts of the world is increasing vegetation dryness, in large part because temperatures are hotter,” Fleishman said. “Even if you have the same amount of precipitation, if you have higher temperatures, things dry out faster.”
Clay Trauernicht, a fire scientist at the University of Hawaii, said the wet season can spur plants like Guinea grass, a nonnative, invasive species found across parts of Maui, to grow as quickly as 6 inches (15 centimeters) a day and reach up to 10 feet (3 meters) tall. When it dries out, it creates a tinderbox that's ripe for wildfire.
“These grasslands accumulate fuels very rapidly,” Trauernicht said. “In hotter conditions and drier conditions, with variable rainfall, it's only going to exacerbate the problem.”
STRONGER HURRICANES
Climate change not only increases the fire risk by driving up temperatures, but also makes stronger hurricanes more likely. In turn, those storms could fuel stronger wind events like the one behind the Maui fires.
That's on top of other threats made worse by climate changes.
“There's an increasing trend in the intensity of hurricanes worldwide, in part because warm air holds more water," Fleishman said. “In addition to that, sea levels are rising worldwide, so you tend to get more severe flooding from the storm surge when a hurricane makes landfall.”
While climate change can’t be said to directly cause singular events, experts say, the impact extreme weather is having on communities is undeniable.
“These kinds of climate change-related disasters are really beyond the scope of things that we’re used to dealing with,” UBC’s Copes-Gerbitz said. “It’s these kind of multiple, interactive challenges that really lead to a disaster.”
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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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Claire Rush is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow her at @ClaireARush.
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