By: Giovanni Ngai
On August 8, 2023, a wildfire started in Maui, Hawaii. Not only did it take place in Maui, but the fire also spread to Lahaina, a coastal town of 13,000 people. It started because active power lines fell in high winds. Some bushfires started on Tuesday. Those fires were then expanded with the help of low humidity, which made things very dry, and strong mountain winds brought by Hurricane Dora. Hurricane Dora is a category four hurricane, hundreds of miles away to the south in the Pacific Ocean. The fire was huge, which meant that the damage was also huge.
The Maui wildfires were deadly, not only to the people and the environment around them but also to the infrastructure around them. Maui Police Chief John Pelletier described the fires as “fire that melted through metal,” and that is true. The fire has damaged at least 2,220 buildings. All of the buildings are scattered over 2,170 acres, according to Kiara Alfonseca of ABC News. Many of these buildings were residential, and most of them were burned to the point where the only thing that may be left is the structure of the residential place. Not only did the building receive damage, but the cars too. Most of them are unusable. This left a lot of the residents with nothing, as the state’s emergency services did not warn them, which left them no time to prepare. West Maui also did not have power, and there was no landline or cell phone service. Fire can damage things for sure, but when a warning is not given about a huge fire like this one, people can also receive the damage.
The death toll from the Maui wildfire is currently at 99, according to CNN news in August. “We’ve got an area that we have to contain that is at least five square miles and it is full of our loved ones,” John Pelletier said. His teams would mark the ruins of homes with a bright orange X to record the initial search and HR when they found human remains. Pelletier also said that finding people is very hard; “we pick up the remains and they fall apart.” So far, they have only found two people. Hopefully, there is more to be found. “The fires have already taken more lives than a 1960 tsunami that killed 61 people on the island of Hawaii, also known as the Big Island,” according to Adeel Hassan. That is how you can confirm that the Maui fire could be one of the deadliest fires Hawaii has seen, killing at least 99 people.
There has been a recent fire in Hawaii that has taken the state by surprise. The state’s warning system failed to activate, which resulted in a huge death toll and an enormous amount of damage. Just imagine if you were asleep and outside there was a wind speed of 50+ miles an hour and all of a sudden a bushfire started, and before you knew it, a huge fire had begun. How would you feel? I know I would be pretty worried.
Links: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/us/maui-wildfires-hawaii.html#:~:text=No%20single%20cause%20has%20been,western%20Maui%20that%20was%20leveled.
https://news.yahoo.com/maui-wildfires-worst-natural-disaster-092026002.html