Search for survivors continues as Maui death toll rises to 55
Welcome to our continued coverage of the devastating wildfires in Hawaii, which are now known to have claimed 55 lives. Search and rescue operations continue, with local authorities saying that none of the major fires on the island were fully contained. Here is what we know so far:
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Local county officials have put the death toll from the fires as at least 55.
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The weather forecast is for falling wind speeds with the possibility of some showers.
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An estimated 12,000 people are still without power, with authorities saying the outages could last for weeks due to the conditions.
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The west side of the island, where the stricken city of Lahaina is, lacks power and water according to the mayor.
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Questions are being asked about whether local officials acted fast enough to warn residents and tourists on the island of the danger they faced.
I’m Martin Belam in London, and I will be with you for the next couple of hours before handing over to my colleagues in the US. You can contact me at [email protected]
Key events
Lahaina resident Cole Millington has spoken to CNN in the US, telling them that he and his family began to flee before getting any official warning. He told viewers:
There wasn’t really an evacuation notice for us. It was more – we realised the town and our street looked like it was going to burn. Within 15 minutes of talking about that and seeing the smoke, we were running down into our cars, anything we can grab – go bags – mostly nothing. I got my passport and my dog and my truck, and we were peeling out of the driveway.
It pinged me as I was getting in my truck to leave. That warning was useless. We have tsunami warnings that I think should have been utilised. I think this could have been handled so much better in so many ways. So many of us residents felt like we had absolutely no warning.
There’s people screaming in the streets. There’s no one saying this is where you should go, this is what you should do. It happened so unbelievably quickly that it was really difficult, really scary. We need real support, this is a severe disaster.
The environmental impact of the disaster is likely to last for some time, AP reports. The wildfires struck Hawaii just as Jamison Gove, a Honolulu-based oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was publishing research in Nature on Hawaii coral reefs’ recovering from a 2015 marine heatwave.
His work highlighted the threat to coral from land-based contaminants running off into the ocean. Gove said Thursday that burning homes, commercial structures and cars and trucks would make any runoff worse by concentrating synthetic materials in the stream.
“It’s not a major leap to suggest when all that material is even more heavily concentrated in a small area, that the consequences would undoubtedly be more severe if and when it’s in the ocean,” Gove said. He noted that Lahaina’s coastal location meant “a minimal distance” for the materials to reach the ocean.
“Coral reefs provide coastal protection, they provide fisheries, they support cultural practices in Hawaii,” Gove said. “And the loss of reefs just has such detrimental consequences to the ecosystem.”
Hawaii firefighters association head Bobby Lee has told local media in Hawaii that 14 firefighters are known to have lost their homes in the blazes.
Honolulu’s KHON2 quoted him saying “Fourteen of our members have been confirmed, as far as losing their homes. Everybody’s okay physically, we don’t know emotionally how they are. I mean, they’re not just firefighters, they’re also part of the community.”
Fires in Hawaii worsened by a number of factors including the climate crisis
Nicola Slawson
Here is an extract from our First Thing newsletter today:
The devastating fires in Hawaii, where at least 53 people have died after a conflagration that engulfed the historic town of Lahaina, were worsened by a number of factors including the climate crisis, scientists have said.
Rising global temperatures and drought helped turn parts of Hawaii into a tinderbox before one of the deadliest fires in modern US history, with conditions worsened by strong winds from a nearby cyclone.
Katharine Hayhoe, the chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, said that global heating was causing vegetation to dry out, priming it as fuel for an outbreak of fire. “Climate change doesn’t usually start the fires but it intensifies them, increasing the area they burn and making them much more dangerous,” Hayhoe tweeted.
Nearly a fifth of Maui, the Hawaiian island where the fires have occurred, is in severe drought, according to the US drought monitor. The island has experienced other serious fires in recent years, with blazes in 2018 and 2021 razing hundreds of homes and causing the evacuation of thousands of residents and tourists.
AP reports that Lahaina’s wildfire risk was well known. Maui County’s hazard mitigation plan, last updated in 2020, identified Lahaina and other West Maui communities as having frequent wildfire ignitions and a large number of buildings at risk of wildfire damage.
The report also noted that West Maui had the island’s highest population of people living in multi-unit housing, the second-highest rate of households without a vehicle, and the highest rate of non-English speakers.
“This may limit the population’s ability to receive, understand and take expedient action during hazard events,” the plan noted.
Maui’s firefighting efforts may also have been hampered by a small staff, said Bobby Lee, the president of the Hawaii Firefighters Association. He told AP there are a maximum of 65 firefighters working at any given time in Maui county, and they are responsible for fighting fires on three islands – Maui, Molokai and Lanai.
Those crews have about 13 fire engines and two ladder trucks, but they are all designed for on-road use. The department does not have any off-road vehicles, he said.
CNN’s chief climate correspondent, Bill Weir, has visited stricken Lahaina, and had this to say:
It looks like a bomb went off in Lahaina town. All the iconic buildings are either flattened or just scorched skeletons of their former self. Flames came so fast, entire structures went up in a matter of minutes. Anything in the town center here is just completely devastated. The fire was so hot, it burned everything all the way to the ground. [It’s] just lifeless, smoky, and sooty devastation where Lahaina town used to be.
Maui County officials have stated that commencing today, they will be issuing updated bulletins for residents via radio at 9am, noon and 3pm.
Making the announcement on Facebook, it said “Radio updates will supplement information posted on the county’s website, Facebook and Instagram pages.”
About 12,000 residents on the island are thought to currently be without power.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us from Maui over the news wires as authorities try to coordinate rescue efforts and look after the people who have lost their homes in the wildfires.
Residents say they were given insufficient warning to flee Lahaina
Questions have arisen about why residents weren’t given enough warning to flee Lahaina as the flames threatened to engulf it. AP notes that Hawaii boasts what the state describes as the largest integrated outdoor all-hazard public safety warning system in the world, with about 400 sirens positioned across the island chain to alert people to threats.
However, reporters spoke to residents who said they got no notice. Thomas Leonard, a 70-year-old retired mailman from Lahaina, said he didn’t know about the fire until he smelled smoke. Power and cell phone services had both gone out earlier that day, leaving the town with no real-time information.
Leonard said he tried to leave in his Jeep, but had to abandon the vehicle and run to the shore when cars nearby began exploding. He hid behind a seawall for hours, the wind blowing hot ash and cinders over him.
Firefighters eventually arrived and escorted him and other survivors through the flames to safety.
Hawaii Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Adam Weintraub told the Associated Press on Thursday that the department’s records don’t show that Maui’s warning sirens were triggered on Tuesday. Instead, the county used emergency alerts sent to mobile phones, televisions and radio stations, Weintraub said.
Our community team want to hear from people in Maui about how they have been affected. Have you been evacuated?
You can get in touch with the team here, but remember your safety and security is most important. If you do decide to message us, please make sure you put your safety first.
Governor Josh Green said late on Thursday that the inferno that reduced much of Lahaina to smoldering ruins was the worst natural disaster in the state of Hawaii’s history, making thousands of people homeless and leveling as many as 1,000 buildings.
Reuters reports he told a news conference “It’s going to take many years to rebuild Lahaina. It will be a new Lahaina that Maui builds in its own image with its own values.”
The city had previously drawn two million tourists each year, about 80% of the island’s visitors. Green said the scope of the disaster would surpass that of 1960, one year after Hawaii became a US state, when a tsunami killed 61 people on the Island of Hawaii.
If you missed it, earlier we had this video interview with Vixay Phonxaylinkham. In it, he explains and his family were out for dinner and arrived in Lahaina at the same time as devastating wildfires. They were forced into the water and clung onto a sea wall in order to survive.
Our picture desk has put together this gallery which shows the extent of the damage in Lahaina. More than a thousand buildings have been burnt.
Local officials unclear on how many people remain missing on Maui
Local officials are still unclear on how many people are missing on Maui, and there is still work to be done in containing the fires.
Island police chief John Pelletier, cited by CNN, said on Thursday that communication challenges, with outages of cellular, internet and radio networks, were hampering efforts to determine how many people were missing. The US coast guard and a search and rescue team from California are being deployed.
Maui officials estimated that the fire which had devastated Lahaina was 80% contained but that two other fires were still burning on the island. High winds and dry conditions contributed to the rapid spread of the flames earlier in the week.
Search for survivors continues as Maui death toll rises to 55
Welcome to our continued coverage of the devastating wildfires in Hawaii, which are now known to have claimed 55 lives. Search and rescue operations continue, with local authorities saying that none of the major fires on the island were fully contained. Here is what we know so far:
-
Local county officials have put the death toll from the fires as at least 55.
-
The weather forecast is for falling wind speeds with the possibility of some showers.
-
An estimated 12,000 people are still without power, with authorities saying the outages could last for weeks due to the conditions.
-
The west side of the island, where the stricken city of Lahaina is, lacks power and water according to the mayor.
-
Questions are being asked about whether local officials acted fast enough to warn residents and tourists on the island of the danger they faced.
I’m Martin Belam in London, and I will be with you for the next couple of hours before handing over to my colleagues in the US. You can contact me at [email protected]
