What caused the devastating Maui fires?

wildfires scorching Hawaii's Maui and big Islands have killed dozens of people left behind smoldering ruins and forced thousands of residents and tourists to flee on Friday the state's Governor called it the worst natural disaster to ever hit Hawaii but how did these fires become so devastating the cause of the blazes was still not clear days after they began the fires have hit large parts of Lahaina a beach resort city of about 13 000 people on Northwestern Maui especially hard it sits in the relative middle of the eight main islands that make up Hawaii's archipelago what experts do know is that conditions were ripe for wildfires there before they sparked off on Tuesday and the risk for large fire potential was higher there than it was in California that's San Jose State University meteorology Professor Craig Clements the National Weather Service had also issued warnings for the Hawaiian islands for high winds and dry weather add to that the unusually high temperatures this summer in part due to climate change in part due to the El Nino warming event so these all line these conditions all lined up with kind of a classic fire weather situation it just so happened that there is ignition during the high wind event allowing a very fast spreading fire to burn into the community towards the coast weather officials say winds from Hurricane Dora have fanned the Flames across the U.S state coming from hundreds of miles Southwest of the Hawaiian islands in the Pacific Ocean separately a low pressure system to the West near Japan has also contributed to sustained high winds these all become a serious problem when they reach Maui's very steep mountain range the winds were coming from the Northeast and they were very strong winds they were descending going up and over the mountain range and descending what we call the Lee side and as when that happens you get acceleration near the surface and so you get actually faster winds on the down slope side or the Lee side of the mountain range Drive agitation is also a contributing factor here's Oregon State University Professor Erica Fleischmann she's also the director of the Oregon climate change Research Institute you can think of it as plants being thirstier so plants use more water when the air temperature so the water that is present um to disappear more rapidly fueling that problem the spread of flammable non-native grasses brought in from around the world in areas of former farmland and forests that's created large amounts of small easily ignited materials that increase the risk and severity of Fire but what about the next big fire Hawaiian officials say it will take several years and billions of dollars to rebuild the damage brought by these fires but scientists say human cause climate change driven by fossil fuel use is increasing the frequency and intensity of such extreme weather events Fleischmann the Oregon State professor says there are ways to limit the risks to homes and buildings though it's not always easy or cheap so many structures ignite because Sparks moving far in front of the fire front are get into the ventilation system of the building and there are ways to construct buildings so that the ventilation systems um it's less easy for the ventilation systems to take up Sparks you can have fire resistant roofs you can be doing different things with decks with materials and extra structures so I mean there are possibilities for saying a wildfire is likely to happen in the future but perhaps buildings don't burn down perhaps people can protect themselves better from smoke or have better alert networks evacuation networks I mean all kinds of systems to say if we accept as a society that these events will happen again how can we best protect ourselves and the things we care about from those events

Channel: Reuters

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Length: 4min 19sec (259 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2023