The reality is that the increased prevalence of huge, destructive fires has been largely the product of poor forest management. In the U.S. and Canada, a combination of environmentalism, general neglect, and government incompetence has put many regions in an increased state of fire danger.
Fires are going to happen. Huge, towering infernos that engulf whole regions are much more preventable.
As Elise McCue wrote in an excellent report for The Daily Signal, Maui has been at high risk for big fires due to many factors. The disappearance of Hawaii’s sugar cane and agricultural industry is a big one. Many former sugar cane fields have been taken over by large stretches of dry, flammable grass.
According to Anthony Watts, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, the topography of Mauicreates particularly dry conditions on large parts of the island and high winds. So, you have an enormous amount of fuel and dry conditions in a region that—global warming or not—gets quite hot.
This was a tinderbox—and a huge catastrophe waiting to happen.
What’s infuriating in the case of Hawaii is that state officials had been warned about this problem for years.
“In 2014, a wildfire-protection plan for the area was written by the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, a nonprofit that works with government agencies,” according to The Wall Street Journal. “It warned that Lahaina was among Maui’s most fire-prone areas because of its proximity to parched grasslands, steep terrain and frequent winds.”
According to the Journal, the plan—which included state officials—laid out clear measures to protect Lahaina from fire. It recommended “thinning vegetation near populated areas, improving wildfire-response capabilities, and working with landowners and utilities to help reduce fire risk on their property.”
These recommendations were more than reasonable, but they appear to have been half-completed, at best.
It’s important to note that Hawaii has been beset by public corruption for a long time, and there are plenty of signs that the state wasn’t exactly prepared to meet the challenge of a predictable big fire.
In 2018, a missile alert went out to residents of the state that said, “ BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
It created a panic on the island and made national news.
One man was blamed for the incident and fired. But now it seems like there might have been a bigger issue than just a single government worker not doing his job correctly.
Five years later and the warning sirens that were supposed to alert residents of Lahaina about the fire never went off. Instead, the warning system “relied on a series of sometimes confusing social media posts,” according to the Associated Press.
“Some survivors have reported receiving no warning messages before the fire reached them, while others said messages appeared and then disappeared from their mobile phones, and they couldn’t find instructions,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
Not great.
Just as with the fake missile alert, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency oversaw the fire emergency system.
“Nobody at the state and nobody at the county attempted to activate those sirens based on our records,” Hawaii Emergency Management Agency spokesman Adam Weintraub acknowledged.
What exactly went wrong?
The answer so far has been that the fires were burning too fast.
“It was largely a function of how fast the flames were moving,” Weintraub said, referring to the failure of emergency management officials to trigger the sirens. “They were trying to coordinate response on the ground, and they had already issued these other alert systems.”
This isn’t exactly a satisfying answer for why a massively expensive alert system designed to warn residents of a huge fire or other emergency completely failed in a serious emergency.
It seems the problems in Hawaii have little to do with climate change and a whole lot more to do with human error and bad policies.
A responsible national and local press would be digging more into those issues than leaning into the usual climate change propaganda.
