It isn’t supposed to burn like this any more

Wildfires on Maui: What Climate Change Tells Us About Native Hawaiian Flaming Grounds, and How Much Land is Cared for

There is more to the wildfire on Maui than just one factor. Overall, climate change is making wildfires worse: A warmer atmosphere can absorb more moisture from the landscape. Climate change makes it more likely that the landscape will be wet in the first place.

El Niño doesn’t always bring drought during Hawaii’s dry season, which runs between May and October. As early as May, the United States national meteorological and osteoporosis Administration were predicting below average precipitation for Hawaii and also the leeward side of Maui.

Add high winds—gusts of up to 80 miles per hour drove the flames a mile a minute across Lahaina—and all it takes is a single spark to ignite a fast-moving blaze. “There’s no firefighting capabilities for structure-to-structure urban fire in winds like that,” says Cova. It becomes a blowtorch if a structure catches on fire, as the wind blows like that.

The flammable grasses in question — including Cenchrus clandestinus (kikuyu grass), Cenchrus setaceus (fountain grass), Melinus minutiflora (molasses grass) and Megathyrsus maximus (guinea grass) — were introduced around the turn of the twentieth century as forage or ornamental plants. native Hawaiian dryland plants are not more fire resistant than plants in other places, according to an anthropologist at Arizona State University. What matters is how much dry fuel there is on the land. Grazing can reduce fuel loads. Bare areas, wet vegetation and even fish ponds are ways to stop or slow fires.

Kamelamela, who is Native Hawaiian, says that whether the plants in an area are native or introduced is less important than how carefully land is cared for. People gathered resources from a forest and used them to tidy up the forest or replant important plants. But such labour-intensive traditional work is hard to fit into a hectic modern life. “Most people in Hawaii have two to three jobs and are just trying to take their kids to soccer practice,” she says.

Climatologists want Hawaii climate data to be in line with the contiguous United States. In Hawaii, there is not a daily or monthly data for soil or potential evapotranspiration, as well as being not included in the scientific products issued by the US federal government. But the University of Hawaii has high-resolution grid data on temperature, rainfall and other variables, says Frazier.

The Los Alamos Wildfire of Lahaina, California, During the Great Chicago Fire, and in the Early 20th Century, a tropical island in the middle of the Pacific

The town of Lahaina was destroyed in a catastrophic wildfire last week and rescue crews are still looking for survivors. It’s the deadliest blaze in modern American history, with 99 people confirmed dead, surpassing the 85 that perished in 2018’s Camp Fire in Paradise, California. The death toll is expected to increase as crews only searched a quarter of Lahaina. At least 2,200 structures have been destroyed.

During the 19th century, it made a kind of terrible sense that blazes like the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 could burn swaths of a city almost totally unchecked. Fire and building codes were lacking. So were firefighting forces and robust water infrastructure. By the early 20th century, those things had been upgraded. Cities and towns were a lot safer for a while. But now expansive urban fires have returned, and they are burning with startling frequency and intensity.

And the Lahaina fire shows that they can burn in places where nobody expects a catastrophic wildfire: a modern town on a tropical island in the middle of the Pacific, whose ecosystems only rarely saw wildfire in prehistory.

These winds across Maui were dry as well, helping to suck the remaining moisture out of vegetation to turn it into fuel. That fuel seems to have been invasive grasses that European colonizers brought when they established plantations. When rains are plentiful, these plants grow like mad, then easily dry out once the rain stops.