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Should the second of the principal islands of the Hawaiian chain suddenly have become a flaming tinder-box and death-trap for more than a hundred of its residents?
There are reasons why it did, but climate change is not one of them.
The northwestern part of the island of Maui had once been a premiere agricultural center featuring pineapple plantations and sugar cane fields.
After WWII, its agricultural sector gave way to (non-native) population growth, real-estate development and the tourism industry. Land values skyrocketed, pricing agriculture out of the market. The former fields of Maui converted to home development, close by the shore, with much of the once-cultivated upland slopes transitioned to open grassy fields.
The abandoned native grassland subsequently became colonized by invasive, annual grasses (particularly guinea-grass of African origins). The grass grows prolifically during Hawaii’s wet winter and spring seasons, then typically it dies off by mid-summer and autumn, leaving head-high tinder standing in copious amounts with high fire potential. Grass fires are not unusual in the Islands.
The fire that engulfed the city of Lahaina and others of Maui’s smaller communities, spread rapidly down-slope through open fields of dry grass driven by the easterly trade-winds amplified by the passing of Hurricane Dora.. The fires quickly torched buildings closest to the fire line. As strong, dry winds descend down-slope, they heated (like California’s Santa Ana winds) and further parched already dry grass, accelerating ready ignitions.
Officials pointed fingers ex post facto to the principal electric utility as the primary culprit for setting the fires. More likely, downed power lines were not the originating element, but became a secondary factor only after transmission lines and poles burned with the passage of the initial fires. The 60-mph winds from a distant hurricane should not have been sufficient to topple transmission towers.
But once an individual house caught fire, it spread to other nearby structures, and, one after another, buildings in the neighborhood caught fire in rapid succession, like a line of dominoes.
Residents received little advanced warning of the expanding fronts that approached soon after ill-advised bulletins that the main fires were nearly contained. Instead, the fires flared up again and advanced reaching speeds of a mile a minute leaving evacuees little time to escape the flames. A number of persons escaped into the ocean or managed to drive away before the fire engulfed their neighborhood. Media reports suggest that fewer than half the households in the affected areas owned automobiles or other means of escape. Some perished as their cars caught fire in local traffic jams. The charred remnants of those vehicles remain.
It is believed that the originating fires were ignited not by lightning strikes, but from human acts such as discarding lit cigarettes, incinerating trash, etc. But with the prevalence of abundant combustibles, any small burning object dropped into leaves or grass could instantly burst into flames that would expand into an uncontrollable, rapidly moving front.
The limited fire-fighting emergency personnel and equipment on Maui and nearby Hawaii and Oahu lacked sufficient capability to deal with the wildfires as they arose, attested by the repeated flare ups after particular fires were believed to be under control.
Hawaii’s warning systems already in place for volcanic eruptions and tsunamis did not sound an alarm (for reasons not yet adequately explained) so that many residents remained uninformed of the pending danger until a fire front was on top of them. Journalists later interviewed burned-out survivors who report surprise and dismay with having to deal with the emergency thrust on them unawares.
More than 110 deaths have now been confirmed at the time of this writing, with a possible score of additional bodies expected yet to be found in the ashes.
The Maui wildfire is chronicled to be among the worst wildfires in United States history based on the number of known human fatalities, extending back for more than a century.
The final total will certainly fall far short of the massive wildfire that visited the lumbering community of Peshtigo, Wisconsin on October 8, 1871. That fire (described by survivors as a fire-storm) claimed the lives of more than 2,500 residents (some experts estimate as many as 3,000 died) in the three northeastern Wisconsin counties and one county in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The recent wildfires in California, Oregon and now in Hawaii did not claim nearly as many as died on a horrible Sunday night concurrent with the more widely publicized Great Chicago Fire totaling some 300 deaths.
The national media are once again attempting to connect the Maui wildfire with CO2-driven climate change as an outgrowth and corollary of man-made global warming. The reasoning goes as follows: a warmer climate (warmer than average seasonal temperatures) leads to a drier climate, that in turn contributes to prolonged drought that generates more numerous and severe wildfires.
But the underlying premise is false. A warmer global temperature would necessarily cause more evaporation of ocean surface water, leading to a wetter atmosphere thus generating more precipitation that should tend to restrict episodes of drought. Major circulation patterns that broadly influence the wind direction in weather systems regionally, account for either the presence or absence of drier than normal, wetter than normal or drought across the temperate continents. The equatorial belt tends to be either persistently wet tropical (rain forest), Sahel-like savannah or desert.
Maui’s rainfall patterns vary seasonally and topographically, with the greater portion of its rainfall received during the winter and spring months, mostly falling along its wet windward east and northern exposures. The rainfall tapers off by mid-summer. The recent wildfires began in August when the lush spring growth of the grasslands had died and dried out enough to form abundant tinder, ready to ignite into the wind-driven firestorms that happened on August 8-12.
Wild-fire hazard experts had warned government officials on Maui and in Honolulu of the potential risk of outbreaks of wildfires months and even years before, but as is too often the way within bureaucracies, the warnings were ignored or dismissed as of trivial importance. Timely efforts to mitigate the potential for wildfire were not undertaken.
Not since the unannounced arrival of military aircraft of the Kido Butai (the First Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy) on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941, have citizens in Hawaii been so rudely awakened by an imminent threat.
William D. Balgord, Ph.D. (geochemistry), heads Environmental & Resources Technology, Inc. in Middleton, Wisc.
The low-lying areas have been taken over by real estate developers,. Why are the once cultivated UPLAMD slopes left uncultivated? Why do so few residemts have cars?
Very good questions, particularly the cultivation. Why don’t the indigenous people grow indigenous crops? It’s obviously more cost effective to transport food thousands of miles.
Perhaps whatever crops can be grown there are not worth growing-nobody will pay for them.
A lot of agriculture in America is unprofitable nowadays. It just depends on the crops and region, I guess. The CA Central Valley still produces the most of any state or country. The mid-west produces a lot of grain.
I think Hawaiians are just incompetent, the whites and all the others included.
Whoever down voted me likes dead people burned up in firestorms.
HAWAIIANS ARE INCOMPETENT.
The Dept. of Agriculture for a lot of crops has price controls in place. The farmer can grow only so many acres of wheat, etc. if they grow over the quote they will not be paid maybe even fined.
The government controls the quantity and the price. The law of supply and demand is ignored.
I.e. during the 1930’s the farmer was paid $6 per bushel. In the 1950s, 60s, 70s, they were paid between $3 to 2 per bushel. From the 1930’s to the 1970’s the cost of planting went up. The only price that went down was payment to the farmer.
When I was there 55 years ago, the grassy slopes of Maui were home to a thriving cattle industry.
That was my initial response when I read the article. Why isn’t Hawaii putting cattle on these slopes? Or is the dry summer not capable of generating enough fodder?
There’s enough fodder in Maui.
I’ve seen wild bulls in the Mojave desert and those things were the mightiest creatures there. No predator would F with them. I don’t even know what they eat. Creosote bushes?
I’m sure there’s plenty of grass on Maui.
Goats. They will keep the hills clean.
Another disastrous fires we can lay the blame on the Eco-Freaks they say they want t o protect the Wildlife hen burn up their Habitat and cost the lives of the innocent. Thanks for Nothing Sierra Club
Could someone from Hawaii confirm for us how bad was the homosexual perversion. prostitution, and child sex abuse on the islands? Have the islands become another Epstein type of pedo vacation islands for pervs from around the globe? If so. then there is another possible cause for the fire – God’s wrath – He decided to clean house.
I think that power lines are the most likely ignition source. The power spent it’s money own LeftTwat issues instead of maintenance of existing infrastructure. Like the fires caused by Pacific Gas and Electric. Which in total burned tens of thousands of buildings and killed thousands. Once the grid started the fire the refusal to shut down the transmission gird added to making the fire a conflagration. I have worked in this field for decades.
With the extreme cost of gas and lots of tourists without anything but public transportation these poor people had no means of escape
I don’t know, Chief. I watched the video of the firestorm’s reported origin and all you can see is a flash of light well above ground level. If that was the real origin, it couldn’t have bee a downed power line. I’ve seen downed power lines here in CA, even in our super dry Summers, and they didn’t burn anything.
Those Hawaiians are obviously lying their asses off.
The line doesn’t have to go down to cause a fire though. An object falling or blowing across two of the AC wires will often ignite. I’ve seen 3/8in diameter by 1-1/2 foot long metal rod vaporize like a bomb going off near where I work, and a squirrel catch fire in front of my house. If there had been dry brush underneath instead of green grass, it would have burned.
That’s interesting
.In the house I used to live in, there was a dead squirrel hanging by its mouth from a power line where the insulation was gone. It was hanging there for about a year.
I admit I don’t know shit about electrical engineering, I just know I don’t trust the Hawaiian authorities and power company.
plus 60 mph winds can’t knock down power lines.
Realize, too, that 60 mile-per-hour winds lift a LOT of air-borne debris into power lines and everything else that is ignitable. Also, according to real news reports, there are a number of disaster and emergency actions not taken by the bureaucrats that could have saved people.
No Mac, those California wildfires were NOT caused by PGE. They were almost all set by arsonists. I’ve seen suggestions of arson as the possible/probable ignition source for at least some of these Maui fires, strangely starting in four different locations at nearly tthe same time.
Yes, PGE had issues with not clearing growth from powerlines, but this was greatly exacerbated by the State of Clifornia denying them permission to do so in many areas. Blame the stupid state gummit for that.
PGE were wrongly blamed and punished (sigificant fines) when they were not at fault. State regulators wet the conditions resulting in the severity of the arson-generated fires. California politicians nEVer are the underlying cause of anything bad. Nor are the Hawaiian government poohbahs.
Maui have been in danger from these massive fallow fields of dry grass for years, decades, even. WHY has this not been addressed? That land COULD have been used for growing somethingm or at least made less volatile by clearing firebreaks. Mowing the green growing grass cuttting firebreaks could have minimised such rapid spread.
Less to do with wind patterns than voting patterns. Puerto Rico’s hurricane readiness and recovery the same. New Orlean’s same thing. Crime in every big city in the USA, the same. Yearly fires in California???
Insofar as CO2 goes, I heard it explained recently in a way that even media types can understand: If all the gasses in the atmosphere made up a 100,000 seat stadium, CO2 would take up 4 seats, up from 3 in decades previous which was considered low. CO2 is currently at optimum levels for plant growth, so if climate change is happening (and the climate is always changing), then it’s changing the correct way for human life to exist.
When you hear about Democrats working on CO2 scrubbers to be launched into the atmosphere, remember this is coming from the people who forced the covid jab, who are feverishly trying to eliminate the combustion engine, who want you to eat bugs, take away your gas stove, take away your guns and NEVER, EVER clean up overgrown areas so as to burn you out. These people want you dead, and if not, on a leash.
You’re right, the lefties want to control everything we do or even think, and the world would be better off if it were warmer. Of course, global climate warming change only occurs during huge solar flares, and North America is tending towards another ice-age.
present day CO2 levels are about one fourth what they were back when the dinosaurs roamed this dirtball. Folks who grow things in controlled atmosphere completely enclosed greenhouses up the CO2 levels to about that level… four times what is in the wild today. The plants grow signficantly faster, and are far healthier.
CO2 a pollutant is the biggest lie ever foisted upn the ignorant public. When I was in 3rd grade we learned about some cycles.. the water cycle (oceans, moisture in the air, rainm rivers, lakes, ocean, round and round) and the CARBO
N cycle.. CO2 in the air, plants make food, leaves, wood via photosynthesis, it grows, we eat, some die and some burn, some get compressed in the earth as they die off. Anilams (including people) bugs, and fungi eat the wood, growing their own selves, and releasing CO into the air as we all breathe. Round and round and round it goes. One more thing: CO2’s “bank” is the world’s oceans. It dissolves into the seawater. As the atmoshere warms, it causes CO2 to be ore eaily dissolved into the air. thus CO2 is controlled by heat… in the atmosphere, which also affects seatwter. COlder water holds more CO2, thus reducing CO2 in tthe air. This worls precisely COUNTER to what the greenies are haring about. CO2 does jot lead temperature temperature controls CO2. Hitther tem in air or seawater causes more CO2 to go into the air. NOT the pther way ronund.
We learned this in the THIRD GRADE. But today’s “schools’ are too busy telling the kids about forty seven different genders, and all manner of perverted sex, when they SHOULD be learning how this place works.
You’re absolutely right. I live in farm country and specifically where the Grainger County tomato was born. Giant hothouses everywhere for year-round work. It was only when I examined a neighbor’s farm that I became acquainted with the giant, jet engine-looking CO2 blowers that were deployed everywhere. “That’s CO2, not a heater, isn’t it?”, I asked. “Yup”, he said. “Makes those maters grow like weeds.”
I remember when I was a kid in southern California, my mother planted a bunch of tomatoes and bell peppers. They did grow like weeds. We couldn’t eat all of them, and I grew up in a family of six.
Finally. A logical and sensible explanation of what happened.
BTW, the Maui ‘Disaster Chief’ (and he certainly was), which had ZERO experience when he was appointed to the (apparently) Dem perk position, stated in his resignation presser that he had no regrets not sounding the alarm because “people would have died anyway”. Only a Democrat could get away with saying that in 2023 and not be under the jail by now.
Well, with Democrats, we know from our media that their intentions are good so it’s unfair to judge them on their (ruinous) performance. You must not have gotten the memo. Check your spam folder.
Excellent point.
I can’t remember the Bush aid’s name, but just for looking confused on camera, the press had an eruption.
In Katrina’s aftermath, all things, including FEMA, were judged “not quick enough”, and laid on Bush
In Maui, FEMA are lounging in a 5-star hotel, taking a comfortable & leisurely pace. (The press are wholly uninterested in any of it.)
Reports are saying… the sirens weren’t used… because the officials were afraid they would send the residents into the fire…
Additionally; reports are saying… the Police were intentionally blocking/stopping the road OUT of Maui… preventing an escape… which caused the traffic jam…
Gross incompetence on display, courtesy of liberals in power.
The press will be working overtime to print the state sanctioned version. (“Clean up on aisle 5!”)
Just as CA ignores the WISDOM of people who KNOW that over population of TREES in a forest is NOT a GOOD THING, HI will continue to ignore common sense and the areas of fire fuel will just grow back again! It’s interesting that HI had passed some laws dealing with real estate destroyed by “natural disasters” and how that land can be claimed by the state and resold! At least that’s what one article alluded to!
As for the good people of HI, God Bless you in your grief! I never can understand why bad things happen to good people. Maybe it’s due to BAD PEOPLE doing BAD THINGS!!
The Daily Mail is reporting that Biden’s FEMA “1st responders” (what a joke that is) are chilling in $1000 per night hotels.
Arson? For investing Asian monies into building high rises and the rest of it. Having patronised Maui at least 10 times since 1983, I am shocked at Biden claiming he can relate to this tragedy that cost over 1100 lost lives, since he once had a fire in his kitchen, what a nutcase freak from hell, No wonder Obama chose him, he pulled the wool on that old demented fool since day one so he could just do that, open the doors of Judeo-Christian USA to muslims and idol worshippers, mosqs and cow worshipping temples who jiggle beeds, it honestly makes one wonder if some of his friends will come out of the woodwork and proclaim having the solution to create a recycled Maui! Yes it has become homo druggie land and it’s high time they took their sex toys and perversions out of the lives of Hawaiian people, who should get angry and reclaim their island throwing out haolies that have desecrated it by bringing in their own brand of filth. God bless Hawaii and her people!
the missed key to dealing with those fires is military Chinook helicopters on Hawaii slinging fire suppression dip-and-fill water bags which COULD have been there in half an hour, dipping thousands of gallons of seawater and dropping it on the buring areas, dousing the fires in an hour or maybe two. Such rigs are used all over the Pacific Northwest for fire suppression, along with fixed wing aircraft. VERY effective even in steep canyons. Open fields, as on Maui, would be a cakewalk.,
But no one called them. So they sat on the tarmac, doing what poilticians do best.. nothing.
Well In June I was in Maui and I don’t recall seeing any told grass.
I have read elsewhere that some county water commissioner did not release additional water flows to the fire hydrants because he wanted to conserve water.
It seems that we have perilous times due to unruly selfish people…They are pretty much lovers of themselves and do whats right in their own eyes, and whoever gets in the way is eliminated. Money controls these people. The World Economic Forum has a mission to shape global, regional, and industry agendas. Since 1971 Klaus Schwab and his partners have convened each year to brainstorm concerning how to overtake existing national infrastructure and turn them into spokes of what we might call a global wheel which feeds into a unified central world government. Its the Davos agenda.
It’s great to see the writers at FrontPage rejecting the Cult of Baal in their articles.
These “climate change” fanatics are just modern day accolytes of the ancient pagan earth god Baal.
This author and Daniel Greenfield are clearly not buying the pseudo-science we’re being fed my the modern pagans.