The death toll from wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui rose to 55 on Friday morning, with local officials expecting a significantly higher increase as rescue teams continue their search for survivors and victims. The disaster is likely to be the deadliest since Hawaii became the last of the 50 U.S. states in 1959.
A banyan tree rises among the rubble of a wildfire, Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii [AP Photo/Rick Bowmer]
Firefighters have thrown about 150,000 gallons of water on the fires, but strong winds that caused the fires to quickly grow out of control Tuesday evening have hampered rescue and firefighting efforts.
Hawaii Department of Defense Adjutant General Ken Hara said in a press conference Thursday, “Because the wind was so strong, we were unable to provide helicopters to assist with the water buckets.” Hara added that it was Maui County firefighters “It was difficult” to contain the fires as gusts reportedly reached speeds of 85 miles per hour.
The flames spread so quickly that some victims burned alive in their cars. An online database called the Maui Fire People Locator, maintained by resident Ellie Erickson and shared widely on social media, showed that more than 1,300 people remained to be located as of Thursday evening.
Local residents report that the death toll is much higher than official reports. A tweet on Thursday morning said there were “bodies.” [sic] all over the city and in the water that have not yet been recorded and reported. So many people never managed to get out. There may be hundreds dead and even more missing.”
A rescue worker posted a video on Facebook describing the tragedy he saw in Lahaina, a community of more than 12,000 people. He said he had seen 50 bodies that had already been recovered by the Coast Guard and National Guard. He also said three large dump trucks were sent to the area to recover the body.
The fires that have been raging in Maui since Tuesday continue to burn, and fires have now been reported on the islands of Oahu and the Big Island of Hawaii. The fires that destroyed most of the town of Lahaina on Maui’s west side were 80 percent contained as of Thursday morning, according to county officials.
Aerial video taken over historic Lahaina showed that entire neighborhoods had been wiped out and reduced to ash. The Associated Press (AP) reported: “Block after block was nothing but rubble and blackened foundations, including along the famous Front Street, where tourists shopped and ate just a few days ago. The boats in the harbor were burned and smoke hung over the town, which dates back to the 18th century and is the largest community on the west side of the island.”
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green told the AP, “Lahaina has been burned with all but a few exceptions,” with more than 1,000 buildings destroyed by fire. The governor also said: “As we get into the many hundreds of houses that were destroyed by the fire, we are of course very afraid that we will find the remains of people who were unable to escape.”
Hawaii Emergency Management Agency spokesman Adam Weintraub told news media, “Some of the aerial photos we’ve seen from the area remind me of the images from Dresden during World War II,” referring to the German city that was visited by was almost completely destroyed by Allied bombings in February 1945.
The deadly speed of the Maui wildfire is reminiscent of the devastating Camp Fire that raged for more than two weeks in Butte County in Northern California’s Sierra foothills in 2018. This fire was the deadliest and most destructive in California history, killing 85 residents of the City of Paradise.
At its peak, the bonfire spread at a rate of 80 football fields per minute, spreading embers for miles in many directions. It destroyed over 18,804 structures and burned over 153,000 acres. Many of those who died could not be evacuated in time, with some dying in their cars while others perished in their homes without receiving any warning of the flames.
President Joe Biden issued a perfunctory, three-paragraph White House statement Thursday declaring a “major disaster” in Hawaii. Biden ordered federal assistance to wildfire-affected areas and mobilized the U.S. Coast Guard, Navy Third Fleets and Army “to assist with firefighting and search and rescue on the island of Maui.”
As with any disaster involving natural forces amplified by capitalist-induced climate change, the ruling establishment is quickly absolving itself of any responsibility for creating the conditions that lead to death and destruction as predicted by the scientific community became decades.
Numerous reports now reveal that the island of Maui had become a powder keg in recent decades and was primed for disaster. For example, in a study published in 2015 by researchers at the University of Hawaii and the University of Colorado, they found that over the past 25 years, rainfall at select monitoring sites was 31 percent lower in the wet season and 6 percent lower in the dry season.
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On Thursday, The New York Times spoke with Abby Frazier, a climatologist at Clark University who has studied Hawaii, who said there are multiple causes of climate change in Hawaii.
One is a weather pattern known as La Niña, which began bringing reduced rainfall to the Hawaiian Islands in the 1980s. The weaker La Niñas “aren’t getting us out of drought,” Dr. Frazier. Another factor is that higher temperatures cause the clouds over Hawaii to become thinner and there is less precipitation with less cloud cover. Additionally, large storms move northward over time, delivering less rain than they normally bring to the islands.
Dr. Frazier said all three of these factors are the result of rising temperatures. “There is probably a signal of climate change in everything we see,” she said.
Another study published by the University of Hawaii in 2016 cited deforestation and agricultural abandonment, as well as the introduction of non-native, fire-prone grasses, as factors making Hawaii more vulnerable to fires.
Experts say vegetation in Maui’s lowland areas has been very dry this year following below-average rainfall in the spring and summer. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor on Thursday, nearly 16 percent of Maui County is experiencing severe drought and another 20 percent is experiencing moderate drought. These are the areas where the fires are burning.
Dry and invasive grasses have spread in place of crops like pineapples and sugarcane grown on farms and other native vegetation. The invasive grasses such as sea grass, which can grow up to 15 centimeters a day and reach a height of up to three meters, can grow back better after a fire and also ignite more quickly. This is a factor in the speed at which the fires spread.
As Ryan Longman, a research fellow at the East-West Center, told the Times: “The landscape is just covered in combustible material. All the conditions just came together.”
These underlying conditions – all of which are man-made and given free rein by the capitalist system – were set in motion by the winds of Hurricane Dora, which passed south of Hawaii on Tuesday as a Category 4 storm. Although the hurricane was hundreds of miles south of Maui, it produced winds of more than 60 miles per hour, helping the fire spread at an unprecedented rate.
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