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A Journey Through Lahaina’s Endless Streets of Suffering

A historic Hawaiian town that was once home to 13,000 people is now a desolate ruin. With the death toll rising, the true scope of the tragedy is still unfolding.

As residents slowly returned and sifted through the debris of their homes, many were finding little to salvage. Credit...

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By Mike Baker

Photographs by Philip Cheung

Mike Baker and Philip Cheung reported from Lahaina, Hawaii, after the bulk of it was destroyed by fire.

• Published Aug. 11, 2023 Updated Aug. 15, 2023

Along the empty streets of Lahaina, the warped shells of vehicles sit as if frozen in time, some of them still in the middle of the road, pointed toward escapes that were cut short. Others stand in driveways next to houses that are now piles of ash, many still smoldering with acrid smoke.

A few agitated myna birds chirp from their perches on palm trees that have been singed into matchsticks, the carcasses of other birds and several cats scattered below them in the streets.

Across the town that was once home to 13,000 people, residents are slowly returning and sifting through the debris of their homes, some of them in tears, finding little to salvage.

New York Times Correspondent Reports on the Wildfires in Maui

Mike baker, the seattle bureau chief for the new york times, visited lahaina, hawaii, where raging wildfires have decimated the area..

We spent several hours walking through Lahaina, and, really, it’s a scene of immense devastation. I mean, it’s a mile-long spread of destroyed homes and rubble and ashes. There’s still properties that are smoldering. It was really just difficult to comprehend what we were looking at yesterday in Lahaina. It’s really a place that brings a lot of joy to a lot of people. For the locals, they have a really cherished sense of community in Lahaina. For the tourists, it’s a place where many people have some of their fondest life memories. Some of them had minutes or even just seconds before they realized they needed to get out. We met one man who was there and realized he didn’t have really any chance to evacuate, and he ended up lying face down in the dirt at a baseball field and spent hours as embers were flying overhead and around him. He called it like a, you know, a sandstorm of heat that he could not get away from. There’s so much work left to be done there. I think a lot of residents are pretty alarmed at how little support they’ve seen so far. The community has really stood up to fend for itself, driving pickup trucks out of town to get bottles of water, driving boats out to pick up gas for the community. To see the level of suffering and devastation and grief there, it’s, you know, it was really difficult to process, and it’s hard to think about where Lahaina is going to go from here.

In a neighborhood along the burned hillside, Shelly and Avi Ronen were searching the rubble of their home for a safe that held $50,000 of savings, left behind with the rest of their belongings when they fled the fire. They considered themselves lucky to have made it out at all: A man just up the hill did not survive, and neighbors told them that several children who had ventured outside to get a look when the fire was approaching were now missing.

“A lot of people died,” Ms. Ronen said, her voice breaking. “People couldn’t get out.”

As she spoke, her husband emerged from the rubble of the house with the safe in his hands, seriously charred, but intact. There were no signs of the key, so he bashed it with a rock until it broke open.

Inside it was a pile of ash.

In the wake of the fire that tore with stunning velocity through Lahaina this week, killing at least 67 people, much of the small, historic town was cut off for days from the rest of the island of Maui by downed power lines and police checkpoints. It sat in lonely desolation, the houses uninhabitable, the search for victims slowed by a lack of personnel and a growing conviction that no one would be found alive.

For centuries, Lahaina has been a focal point of Hawaiian history and culture , a former capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom and a booming center of modern tourism that had managed to preserve its old-world charm. It was home to both vital relics that connected people to the island’s Indigenous history and a downtown of island-chic art shops and restaurants with astonishing views.

Now those treasures are gone, replaced by scenes that locals and officials have repeatedly likened to a war zone. As residents return to their homes, some are making reluctant but unavoidable plans for life elsewhere. With more bodies likely to be found as the searches continue, their town has become the scene of one of the nation’s deadliest wildfires of the past century.

It had all happened so fast, residents said. A brush fire on Tuesday morning had been contained, but then fire flared up once again in the afternoon. Stoked by hurricane-force gusts of wind, it was soon rushing down the hillside through town, tearing across a drought-parched landscape with little to stop it until it reached the ocean.

At the shoreline, where the fire had run out of room, waves lapped up to beachfront properties that had few discernible features of a home — a singed mailbox, a metal gate, a water heater poking up through the debris. An orange cat slipped out from behind the husk of a vehicle and then darted away.

A man could be seen pedaling his bike near the waterfront, checking on the homes of people he knew. With no power and limited cellphone coverage, he did not know how many people had died. When he learned it was in the dozens, he grew emotional, looking upward and blinking back tears.

Several blocks to the north, past the school buildings gutted by flames, the town’s prized banyan tree sat wounded, its leaves curled and crispy. Sitting alone below its inadequate shade was a man named Anthony Garcia.

When the fire began raging, some people had only minutes to flee, jumping into cars or simply running as fast as they could as the inferno spit embers onto their necks.

Mr. Garcia, 80, said he had been eating chips and salsa and sipping on a beer in a local restaurant when smoke suddenly began to billow through town. He made it back to his apartment to grab medications but then ran out of time. He sought refuge on a nearby baseball field. For what seemed like hours, he lay face down in the dirt, his throat burning, his skin baking. “It was like a sandstorm of heat and embers,” he said.

Somehow, the fire spared him. But with his apartment and all his belongings gone, he has been sleeping outside, unsure of where to go.

“I really don’t know what I’m going to do,” Mr. Garcia said. “I’m in God’s hands.”

On nearby Front Street, a small group of firefighters and work crews were moving debris to clear the roadway, but few were navigating through the broad devastation further east. Many there said little help was being sent; locals had taken matters into their own hands, shuttling in water bottles in pickup trucks and gas by boat. Some drove cautiously through the streets, offering food or aid to those in need.

In the Lahainaluna neighborhood along the hillside, Lanny Daise, 71, pulled up to the house that had been built by his wife’s grandfather decades ago. Now it was a pile of twisted metal atop a charred foundation. As he navigated the debris, he kept stopping, sighing and taking photos on his phone. Nothing was salvageable, save for a couple of wrenches.

Two blocks further up, Benzon and Bella Dres were hunting for jewelry and not having any luck. Their rented house was gone and they had lost everything. Ms. Dres was wearing a pink shirt given to her by a manager at the hotel where she worked. For now, they were staying at another hotel where Mr. Dres worked, but, with no money or belongings, they were uncertain of the future. Eventually, they stopped searching.

“Everything’s gone,” Ms. Dres said.

As they drove away, traveling past downed power lines, Felina De La Cruz and her family were arriving at a house nearby, a property with multiple units that was home to 17 people from four families. Ms. De La Cruz said that when they moved from the Philippines to Lahaina two decades ago, they knew upon arriving that it was where they wanted their home to be. It was a community where everyone took care of each other, she said.

The neighborhood, perched on a hillside with a picturesque view of the town, the waterfront and the sunsets beyond, had a different view now: Ms. De La Cruz looked out on nearly a mile of charred homes below, the smoke still rising into the sky and casting a haze over the town.

Nothing was clear. With no belongings and no permanent place to live, it was a mystery where she and her husband would go with their three children. When would anyone be able to live here again?

“It’s so, so sad,” she said. “I love this place. I love Lahaina. I want to live here. But, I don’t know.”

Mike Baker is the Seattle bureau chief, reporting primarily from the Northwest and Alaska. More about Mike Baker

The Maui Wildfre, One Year Later

The 2023 blaze on the hawaiian island killed 102 people. it was the deadliest wildfire in america in more than a century..

Inside the Inferno: We used video evidence, data and interviews to reconstruct the day of the Lahaina wildfire , tracing the path of the blaze and revealing a cascade of failures.

Burned Out of Lahaina: A year after the historic seaside town was incinerated, thousands of residents are still trying to rebuild their lives elsewhere. Many are facing new hardships .

A Struggle to Survive : A woman who was working as a janitor in Lahaina and sending money to her family in the Philippines survived the fire. She couldn’t survive the year after .

Finding Solace in Baseball: A Little League player’s family lost almost everything in the fire. His team’s string of success this summer has represented a return to normalcy .

Preventing the Next Fire: Officials in Hawaii said they would make fire safety and preparedness improvements, but progress has been slow and costly. Here are five changes they hope to put into place .

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'Burned down to ashes': Why devastated Lahaina Town is such a cherished place on Maui

After Maui's Lahaina Town was razed by fire Tuesday night , residents and visitors are mourning the loss of cultural and religious sites that trace their roots back centuries.

More than 250 structures were damaged or destroyed , according to Maui County, as entire blocks of Lahaina − once the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii − went up in smoke.

Lahaina Town has also long claimed home to the largest banyan tree in the U.S., which was scorched in the fires .

The fire spread and grew faster than anyone could have imagined. In a few hours, the wind-driven blaze tore through popular Front Street and decimated the town center, which traces its roots to the 1700s and was on the National Register of Historic Places.

“Lahaina Town is now burned down to ashes, the whole entire town − hotels, buildings, the historic sites,'' said Leomana Turalde. He told USA TODAY his mother, Jon Ho’okano, 56, worked for years as a dancer at Old Lahaina Luau, considered a "well-preserved epicenter of Hawaiian culture and storytelling," the venue says on its website .

Lahaina has a population of around 13,000, according to the 2020 U.S. Census .

How old is Lahaina Town?

More than 1,000 years ago, long before the U.S. was founded, people were living on the Hawaiian islands and leaving their mark . From the years 1,000-1,200, people from Polynesia traveled about 2,500 miles north and settled on the islands of Hawaii, the National Park Service says on its website .

Throughout history, different Hawaiian rulers vied for power over the islands, and Lahaina was consistently a site of royal and religious importance with its cemeteries and historic churches.

Waiola Church, which burned in the fire , was the site of the start of Christianity in Hawaii in the early 1800s, according to the church's website .

The church crumbled , but the loss will be temporary, Anela Rosa , the church's lay minister of 13 years told USA TODAY. She said the church will bring people together for the next service, even if they have to use pop-up tents.

"This church, this congregation, has a resiliency unlike any other," Rosa said. "That's why I know we will rebuild and be better than ever."

Before Hawaii became a U.S. territory in 1898, King Kamehameha I made Lahaina the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

Also in the 1800s, Hawaii's royal leaders built a brick palace in Lahaina, along with other royal residences, according to one of the town's tourism websites .

Lahaina Banyan Court Park is home to the famous banyan fig tree planted in 1873 after being imported from India. It was threatened by the fires and suffered damage to trunks and limbs but  remains standing , the Honolulu Civil Beat reported.

Fires destroy 'cultural heritage' in Lahaina

Locals say losing so much of Lahaina is painful because the culture the place represents connects to a time with revered roots.

For Francine Hollinger, a 66-year-old Native Hawaiian, losing Lahaina was "like losing a family member."

“Because they’ll never be able to rebuild it, like we wouldn’t be able to bring back our mother or father,” she said.

While it’s still difficult to assess the damage, state Sen. Gilbert Keith-Agaran told USA TODAY various landmarks have reportedly been lost – historic businesses and cemeteries where royal figures were buried. 

“It’s a real loss. Hawaii and Maui have tried really hard to preserve and protect those places for many, many years … not for the sake of tourism but because it’s part of our cultural heritage,” said Keith-Agaran, whose district includes Kahului in central Maui.

“We just lost a large part of our heritage,” he said.

In addition to being a historic area, Lahaina Town is a residential and tourist area with a commercial district. For decades, it has been considered the west side of Maui's main downtown area.

The area is also known for two longtime beach resorts, Kaanapali and Kapalua. Lahaina Harbor attracts tourists with water sports, fishing and boat rides.

Contributing: Terry Collins, Alia Wong, N'dea Yancey-Bragg, Jorge L. Ortiz, Kathleen Wong, Ashley Lewis, Itzel Luna, USA TODAY ; Associated Press

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What We Lost in the Lahaina Fire

The fire razed Maui’s densest dining town, destroying the fifth-generation-owned Nagasako Okazuya Deli, Maui’s oldest dive bar, the pickle mango stand on Front Street, and so much more

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Throughout its centuries-long history, Lahaina has been many things to many people: a royal residence, a missionary post, a hard-partying harbor town, a tourist trap. For some, it was simply home.

The fire that reduced the historic town to ash on August 8, 2023 was unsparing. It took the lives and livelihoods of so many of our community members. Around 50 restaurants went up in smoke that day. As the former dining editor for Maui Nō Ka ‘Oi magazine, I can name 30 without even trying. It’s an unfathomable loss for the industry — one that feels particularly cruel after everyone worked so hard to survive the pandemic.

For many, it’s still too early to talk about rebuilding. Even apart from the grief and mourning that still hangs in the air, on a very practical and tangible level, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates it will take months just to clear away the literal toxic debris. Before the fire, Lahaina’s world-famous Front Street was little more than a patchwork of wooden shacks held together by layers of paint, cooking grease, crusty sea salt, banana sap, and gossip. Some restaurants will certainly reopen in new locations, but that unique patina that made the place so compelling is gone.

And some restaurants will never reopen, including Nagasako Okazuya Deli , the oldest and arguably most beloved eatery in Lahaina. For 120-plus years, the Nagasako family served the West Maui community, and it started with Mitsuzo Nagasako, who opened a candy store on the corner of Front Street and Lahainaluna Road in the early 1900s. With each successive generation the business evolved — into a supermarket, then a grocery, and finally an okazuya, or deli. Lahainaluna boarding students crowded the okazuya counter before school each day to stock up on the deli’s special Spam musubi: meat in the middle, fried in teriyaki sauce. Families stopped by before and after the beach for shoyu chicken and breaded teriyaki steak. A week after the fire, the Nagasakos announced through a heartfelt post featuring photos of all six generations of the family that they would not reopen. This is one of the many threads to Lahaina’s past that has now been lost.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nagasako Okazuya Deli (@nagasako.okazuya)

The Pioneer Inn was Lahaina’s first hotel, built in 1901. Over the years it housed a saloon, stage, and movie theater. Most recently it was home to Papa‘aina , chef Lee Anne Wong’s wharf-side restaurant. Originally from New York, Wong came to Maui by way of Honolulu. She learned to cook Hawai‘i-style cuisine at Koko Head Café, her brunch spot in Honolulu’s Kaimukī, and perfected it at Papa‘aina, where she served breakfast ramen and mapo tofu loco mocos. A few years ago, Wong hosted a dumpling workshop in the Inn’s courtyard, drawing lessons from her cookbook, Dumplings All Day Wong . With her son on her hip, she taught us to roll and pinch our dough into crescents and dip them into boiling broth, much as local cooks had for the past 100-plus years. Whether or not Papa‘aina will ever reopen is unknown — right now, Wong is focusing on relief efforts for the thousands of displaced people.

Not long ago, at Kimo’s Maui , I had lunch with Paris-born artist Guy Buffet, who had immortalized the Front Street restaurant in a painting that captures the euphoria of dining there on the waterfront. When Rob Thibaut and Sandy Saxten opened Kimo’s in 1977, it was the beginning of their T S Restaurants empire, which now includes Dukes Waikīkī, Hula Grill, and Leilani’s on the Beach, among others. A trip to Maui was hardly complete without tackling a mammoth slice of Hula Pie at sunset while surfers caught the last ankle biters of the day at Breakwall. The owners have already pledged to rebuild their landmark restaurant.

Two doors down from Kimo’s, passersby could peek through a porthole into the Lahaina Yacht Club . Lahaina’s second-oldest restaurant was invite-only — but more in the piratical than prissy sense. Before transpacific sailor Floyd Christenson opened the beloved Mama’s Fish House in Kū‘au, he and a few other old salts founded the mariner’s club in 1965. They transformed a Front Street laundry into a clubhouse and contracted Hawaiian artist Sam Ka‘ai to design the club’s pennant, or burgee: a white whale on red backing. Colorful burgees from yacht clubs worldwide hung over the open-air dining room, where commodores traded navigational tips and tossed back shots of Old Lahaina Rum. If you rang the ship’s bell, you were buying the whole restaurant a round.

Across Honoapi‘ilani Highway, the Sly Mongoose boasted no view whatsoever — instead, Maui’s oldest dive bar advertised air-conditioning. Since 1977, “the Goose” had lured patrons indoors with its jukebox, goldfish crackers, and happy hour featuring $2 Jager Spice and “free beer tomorrow.”

These are only a fraction of the restaurants lost; entire chapters could be written about Lahaina Grill, Pacific’o, Feast at Lele, and Fleetwood’s on Front Street, where the Mad Bagpiper serenaded the setting sun on the rooftop every night. Restaurants weren’t the only places to find sustenance in Lahaina, either. There were food trucks, farmer’s markets, and even temples that served specialty snacks. During Chinese New Year, the Wo Hing museum offered crispy gau gee samples and moon cakes imported from Hong Kong. During the summer Obon festival, Lahaina Hongwanji and Jodo Mission hosted nighttime dances with chow fun booths. The outdoor kitchen at Jodo Mission overlooked the ‘Au‘au Channel and the steam from the boiling noodles wafted out to sea along with lanterns to remember the dead.

Lahaina old-timers will remember the little mango stand across from 505 Front Street. For years a local woman sold pickled mango there in little plastic sacks. Kids biked over after baseball games for bags of mango and sodas. In the summer, Lahaina’s mango trees were laden with the orbs of fruit. And before there were mangos, there were ‘ulu, or breadfruit, groves. Lahaina’s ancient name, Malu ‘Ulu O Lele, refers to the ‘ulu trees that once grew so thick you could walk for miles beneath their shade. Perhaps those trees will grow again.

As enormous as this disaster was, the community’s response was even greater. The day after the fire, Maui’s chefs sprang into action. The team of the grassroots project Chef Hui mobilized at the UHMC Culinary Arts campus to do what they do best: feed and nourish their community. In the first six days, they served over 50,000 hot meals to survivors of the fire. Despite losing her Maui restaurant, Wong has been at the campus every day plating up bentos, along with Isaac Bancaco, who lost both his home and his workplace at Pacific’o. Jojo Vasquez lost his home, too, and was forced to temporarily close Fond , his restaurant in Nāpili. That didn’t stop him from messaging his Chef Hui colleagues: “Tag me in coach, I stay ready.” Joey Macadangdang turned his restaurant, Joey’s Kitchen in Nāpili, into an emergency shelter the night of the fire and has been cooking for his displaced neighbors every day since.

Hawai‘i’s restaurant owners and workers are a tight-knit crew, battle-tested and resilient. Long before this fire stretched them thin, Maui’s restaurateurs, chefs, and servers were always at the island’s innumerable charity events with knives and generators ready. I had often wondered how they kept their doors open while donating food and staff to all these causes. Now is our chance to repay them for their decades of nourishment and for helping to knit together Lahaina’s fabric — layers of history laid down by Native Hawaiians, whalers, missionaries, plantation laborers, locals, transplants, and tourists to create the Lahaina in which we lived, loved, and dined.

Shannon Wianecki is a Hawai‘i-based writer and editor who specializes in natural history, culture, and travel.

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The hunt for bones and closure in Maui’s burn fields

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LAHAINA, Hawaii — In a scorched, gray landscape of ash and rubble — between the jagged green ridges of the ancient Puʻu Kukui volcano and the sparkling blue waters of the Pacific — Eric Bartelink stepped carefully around the perimeter of what was once a home.

With hundreds missing after the most destructive U.S. wildfire in a century blazed Aug. 8 through the historic Hawaiian town of Lahaina, the forensic anthropologist at Chico State, was searching for bone — a femur, a skull, a rib — any identifiable skeletal human remains .

The first scene he and his team surveyed after a callout from searchers with cadaver-sniffing canines turned out to be a false lead: the remains of two dogs.

But as Bartelink and his partner scoured the debris of more structures, they spotted a concentration of bones that was recognizably human : a pelvis, a femur, ribs, vertebrae.

They put on white Tyvek suits and protective gloves, in addition to P100 respirators. Then they bent down with trowels and brushes to sieve the debris through fine mesh screens with holes no wider than one-eighth of an inch. Carefully, they collected tiny fragments — shards of finger and toe bones and tooth roots — and put them inside paper evidence bags.

Their goal was to leave no speck of human remains behind.

“We owe it to the families to locate their loved ones, to recover them as complete as possible and to make sure that they all get identified,” Bartelink said. “Not knowing what happened to a loved one is devastating.”

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Three weeks after wildfires burned through Lahaina , the search for human bones — or iwi, as they are known in Hawaiian — has wrapped up, and officials are shifting to clearing toxic debris . But only 115 bodies have been recovered, with fewer than half of them identified.

Still, an unknown number of people remain unaccounted for, with numbers varying depending on the source. The highest is the FBI’s verified list of 388, though questions surround that figure.

Linda Vaikeli, 69, a transplant from Thousand Oaks who settled in Lahaina 26 years ago after falling in love during a vacation, is missing. So is Angelica Baclig, a 31-year-old Filipina immigrant who moved to Maui with her family as a teen and worked in customer service at Foodland grocery store. John “Thumper” McCarthy, 75, a retired sea captain and 40-year fixture of the Lahaina Yacht Club, is also on the FBI’s list. They’re just three of the many, with family and friends waiting to learn their fates.

We owe it to the families to locate their loved ones, to recover them as complete as possible and to make sure that they all get identified.

— Eric Bartelink, forensic anthropologist

Local and state officials have warned that the process of discovering who is safe and recovering and identifying the bodies of those who died will take time — and that not all will be accounted for.

“We do have extreme concerns that because of the temperature of the fire, the remains of those who have died, in some cases, may be impossible to recover meaningfully,” Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “There are going to be people that are lost forever.”

“We’re not recovering whole bodies,” Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said last week at a news conference. “We’re picking up ash. Some of it’s crumbling.”

But many experts who have worked on fire disasters in California and traveled to Maui to help with the recovery are hopeful that the remains of most, if not all, victims can ultimately be found and identified.

Five years ago, when the Camp fire destroyed the Northern California town of Paradise, local officials openly wondered whether they would be able to recover the remains of all the victims. “It is possible the temperatures were high enough to completely consume the body,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said on Day 4.

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In the end, 85 bodies were recovered and 84 identified, most of them with rapid DNA technology.

“Regardless of how hot the fire is, or how long it burns, there will always be something remaining — if you know what you’re looking for,” said Ashley Kendell, an associate professor of forensic anthropology at Chico State who took part in the search on Maui.

The challenge of finding remains

Some bodies were found early on, on roadways and in cars on Front Street.

Over the last few weeks, nearly 350 emergency personnel, plus 50 canines, have taken part in a mammoth search of the rubble of single-family homes and multistory apartments. Day after day, more than 40 firefighters and ocean safety officers donned snorkel gear to conduct grid searches of four miles of sea near the Lahaina harbor and Front Street after reports that some who fled from the flames into the ocean may have died there.

But the official death toll has not risen since Aug. 21.

On Monday, Green said he did not expect to find survivors in the burn zone or see the toll rise significantly. “The search and rescue, at least on land, is done,” the governor said.

Some who are searching for their loved ones are angry.

“If there are 115 bodies, 388 missing and ‘no survivors to be found,’ how does that list not go up?” said Nichol Simpson, who flew from Thailand to Maui last week to submit a DNA sample and search for her brother, Tony, a 43-year-old emergency medical technician. “Even if you are unable to recover the remains, those people existed and they are not to be accounted for amongst the dead?”

The eventual number of the missing could be significantly lower than 388. Last week, when officials released names — a sharp drop from their previous estimate of 1,100 — they urged anyone who knew a person was safe to contact them. In one day, more than 100 people reported someone on the list as safe , but officials have yet to verify that information and publicly update the list.

Even if you are unable to recover the remains, those people existed and they are not to be accounted for amongst the dead?

— Nichol Simpson, whose brother is missing

The task of compiling a list of the missing is complex: Many people have offered partial names or names of people they have not kept in touch with and could have moved out of the area. Some names are duplicated.

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“The number of unaccounted persons tends to start high and then will drop over time as duplicated names are resolved and additional people are located alive,” Bartelink said.

Pelletier said Tuesday that 110 “valid” reports of missing persons have been filed with Maui police. Some have emerged alive and well; some have been found dead. More than 50 open cases are being worked on.

California expertise

California has played a pivotal role in the Lahaina operation, deploying a team of more than 100 search and recovery experts. California is not just Maui’s closest neighboring state; it is well practiced in finding and identifying bodies after a mass fire disaster.

Bartelink has helped recover and identify human remains in some of the world’s most gruesome disaster zones, from mass graves in Bosnia-Herzegovina to the rubble of the World Trade Center towers in New York City after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

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But it was not until five years ago that his focus pivoted to wildfires. He and his team at Chico State spent 21 consecutive days recovering bodies in Paradise, just 14 miles east of their campus. They worked on the 2020 Bear fire and LNU Lightning Complex fires, then the McKinney fire in 2022.

“ It just wasn’t something I expected would be a routine part of my job,” said Kendell, who had never responded to a fire until Paradise, the deadliest wildfire in California’s history.

As wildfires scorch ever larger swaths of California as human-made climate change creates warmer, drier conditions, Kendell now conducts annual search and rescue trainings on wildfire response and victim recovery and is the co-editor of a new book, “ The Path of Flames: Understanding and Responding to Fatal Wildfires ,” a manual for first responders.

“There are more and more widespread wildland fires , not only in California, but in Texas, Colorado, Oregon, in parts of Canada, South Africa and Australia,” Bartelink said.

The risk of wildfires has increased in Hawaii too as global temperatures rise and highly flammable, nonnative grasses spread on former sugar and pineapple plantations.

The fire that tore through Lahaina burned roughly 3.39 square miles and destroyed 2,200 structures — far less than the 239 square miles and 18,800 structures in Paradise.

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The Lahaina fire in West Maui ignited as firefighters focused on the Upcountry fire. What happened next — the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century — left the historic town in ashes.

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But the death toll is higher in Lahaina because the coastal Hawaiian town is a dense urban environment, with tiny lots crammed with clusters of residences housing multiple generations of families. Officials also gave fewer warnings and allegedly blocked roads because of downed power lines, slowing or stopping people trying to flee the flames.

It’s a painstaking process. ...You want to make sure that you are making those IDs, you are recovering everyone who perished in the fire. It’s just not something that you can speed up, unfortunately

— Kendell, forensic anthropologist

In the aftermath, Kendell said, it is important to be diligent about recovering remains and not rush.

“It’s a painstaking process that involves gathering so much information, gathering reference samples for DNA,” Kendell said. “You want to make sure that you are making those IDs, you are recovering everyone who perished in the fire. It’s just not something that you can speed up, unfortunately.”

The anthropologists have worked in so many disaster zones, they’re used to compartmentalizing. They focus on the debris, not the toll of human suffering.

“When you’re out at a scene, you’re not really thinking too much about it,” Bartelink said. “You’re just trying to do your job and making sure that you aren’t missing any victims.”

Still, he said, it felt jarring to work on a disaster on a tropical island. After working long hours in the charred ruins, he drove back to a hotel, past golden beaches with palm trees and an ocean dotted with surfers and luxury catamarans.

“You see tourists doing their things and that just looks weird,” Bartelink said. “You’re like, ‘OK, I was just in this kind of hellscape.’ ”

The science of recovering bones

The fire that ravaged Lahaina flattened one-story homes to 6 inches.

Everything turned grayscale, with few landmarks left other than charred metal shells of cars and cinder block walls jutting out of the debris like gravestones.

To the untrained eye, bone can resemble drywall or foam and insulation and other building materials.

“Burn bone, especially if you don’t know what you’re looking for, looks just like everything around it,” Kendell said.

A forensic anthropologist can usually spot human remains from a few feet away by circling a residence, looking for coiled metal bed springs or bathroom tiles — anything that might indicate known places of refuge such as bedrooms, bathrooms and living rooms — that could lead to a concentration of bone. “We have never found anyone in a kitchen,” Bartelink said.

Contrary to popular belief, bones do not turn to ashes in extreme heat.

When a person receives ashes of a loved one from a funeral home, the bones have been cremated in a furnace for two hours at up to 1,600 degrees. That leaves bone fragments that are then put in a mechanical mill and pulverized to dust, said Vyto Babrauskas, a researcher in fire safety science and president of consulting firm Fire Science & Technology Inc.

In a wildfire, a house burns for about an hour at 1,800 degrees at its hottest point, near the ceiling, Babrauskas said. But human remains would probably be found near the floor level, which is closer to 1,300 degrees — cooler than a funeral furnace.

“We would expect to get some reasonable recovery of the remains — probably enough to identify them,” Babrauskas said.

Depending on the intensity and longevity of the fire, burnt bone tends to be black or white.

First, bone blackens or chars. Charred bone starts to lose its organic matter but will sometimes yield DNA. Then it turns into calcine bone that’s grayish white and brittle with no organic matter.

Road to Lahaina reopens. For many, heartache awaits

Over a week after fire incinerated Lahaina, locals are pressing for a return to work as they seek some sense of normalcy.

Some parts of the skeleton are likely to yield more DNA than others. Thicker bones, like the femur and humerus, tend to better withstand heat. Bones around the torso — the lower spine and pelvis area — are more protected by tissues, fats and muscles that are good for DNA sampling.

How do you identify bones?

After recovery comes identification.

With new rapid DNA technology, investigators no longer have to send all their material to labs with sophisticated equipment, highly skilled technical operators and huge backlogs — a process that can take months or years.

For the record:

10:08 a.m. Sept. 1, 2023 An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that 23 people died in the Conception dive boat fire in 2019. The total was 34.

Among the experts whom California deployed to Maui are Kim Gin, the former Sacramento County coroner who used rapid DNA technology to identify Camp fire victims, and Lt. Jarrett Morris of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office, who used the same method after the Conception dive boat fire killed 34 people in 2019.

The Camp fire was the first mass casualty disaster to use the ANDE Rapid DNA system to compare the DNA of remains with the DNA of close family members.

A sample — a tiny fragment of bone or an oral swab — is put into a chip a little bigger than a computer hard drive, which is then inserted into a black box that is an air compressor and computer that performs data interpretation. Within 96 minutes, the system can develop a DNA profile.

Only 22 Camp fire victims were identified using conventional methods, including fingerprints, dental records and surgical devices, such as knee replacements, breast implants and pacer machines, according to a 2020 study in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. A far greater number, 62, generated DNA IDs.

“If there’s bones or tissue available, DNA can be abstracted from it,” Morris said.

After the Conception fire, officials were able to identify all the victims within 10 days.

“We knew who was on that boat, we had a manifest, so we knew where to start,” Morris said. “In this incident, we don’t know exactly who we’re dealing with. We don’t know exactly where they were, where they came from, if they had moved from one place to another.”

Lahaina is also a more complicated site for identification than Paradise because its historic downtown on the water’s edge was a bustling tourist site with a harbor, museums, galleries, bars and souvenir stores.

Ultimately, Morris said, not all the bodies may be identified by rapid DNA technology. In challenging cases, in which bones are severely burned, traditional labs can carry out more advanced abstraction of the DNA.

The final challenge is getting family members to provide DNA samples.

Collecting a DNA sample is a straightforward process, requiring a simple buccal swab rubbing a Q-tip six times on the inside of each cheek.

So far, just over 120 relatives of the Lahaina missing have come forward to provide DNA samples — significantly lower than in other major disasters. After the Camp fire, 255 people provided DNA.

“We are still below where we had hoped to be,” said Maui Prosecuting Atty. Andrew Martin, who is running the Family Assistance Center in Kaanapali. The more family members who provide samples, he said, the more chance officials have of identifying a body.

Lahaina is home to a high number of immigrants — nearly a third of residents are foreign-born and 40% are Filipino — which means a significant proportion of family members who can provide DNA samples live abroad and face hurdles in getting swabs to the island.

Some family members may be displaced and unaware of the need to provide samples. Others may fear their DNA will go into state and federal databases.

Martin and other officials have stressed repeatedly on local news that DNA samples will be used only to identify those who perished in the wildfire.

“The only thing that their DNA is used for is identifying their loved ones,” he said. “That’s it.”

After days scouring the burn zone, Bartelink said, he hoped that the remains yielded genetic DNA and that more families come forward to provide swabs. Only then can the missing be accounted for.

“The closure process often starts with just knowing what happened, where were they found, making sure that they’re identified,” he said. “We really are doing this for the families.”

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See the historic sites of Lahaina before and after the Maui wildfires

The landmarks of lahaina have been badly damaged and restored before. preservationists hope to rebuild.

Plantation-era wooden buildings turned to ashes. Landmarks made from coral, lava rock and concrete hollowed out by flames. A once-quaint historic street blackened and wrecked.

The wildfire that ravaged Maui this week , killing at least 80, decimated homes and incinerated cultural sites in the historic town of Lahaina . As rescue crews continue working and more than 14,000 people face displacement, the focus there is on helping those who lost their homes, treating the injured and locating the hundreds still missing.

Hawaii utility under scrutiny for not cutting power to reduce fire risks

Adding to the devastation is the loss of some of Lahaina’s culturally rich places, spots that visitors to Maui remember and locals had painstakingly preserved. Over the last 200 years, most of them have been damaged or destroyed – by the strong Kauaula wind, by accidental fires, by time – and rebuilt.

That could happen again, meaning the precious sites may not be lost forever.

“I know we’re going to rebuild, and I know the entire town is going to come together,” said Kimberly Flook, deputy executive director of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation.

“The physical manifestation of the many stories of Lahiana have been lost, but the stories themselves are not,” she said. “The stories have not gone anywhere. The culture lives in the community.”

What we know about the cause of the Maui wildfires

The town is rich in royal Hawaiian history and home to remnants of the missionary era — a place sometimes called Maui’s crown jewel or the colonial Williamsburg of the Pacific. Taking stock of the wreckage there was only just beginning. Flook’s organization was making assumptions about buildings’ fates based on videos and photos, satellite images and the path of the fire.

Maui wildfire updates

Ticking through a list of the town’s historic sites meant ticking through a list of places that were likely mostly destroyed, from a Chinese hall that once served as a social center for immigrants to an erstwhile jail that rounded up rowdy sailors for infractions like drunkenness and adultery.

“It was basically a matchbox waiting to go up,” Lee Anne Wong, executive chef at Papa’aina at the now-decimated Pioneer Inn, said of Lahaina’s historic district. “It was all old wood buildings that had been dried out in the sun.”

Maui fires not just due to climate change but a ‘compound disaster’

Wooden structures – the Wo Hing Museum and Cookhouse, the cell blocks and gatehouse at the Old Lahaina Prison – are presumed to be gone. The Waiola Church, which recently celebrated its 200th anniversary, was engulfed in flames. The Lahaina Harbor was charred and blackened, wreckage floating in the water.

Stone and concrete buildings – the Baldwin Home, the oldest house on Maui; the Old Lahaina Courthouse, which housed a heritage museum; the Masters Reading Room, an 1800s club for ship captains – may have their walls left. Made of coral, lava rock and concrete, such historical buildings often had wooden floors, roofs and other parts, Flook said. She saw a video of Baldwin Home on fire and satellite images showed the courthouse’s coral block walls left standing.

After five hours in ocean, Maui fire survivor is ‘blessed to be alive’

The restaurant Fleetwood’s – which stood on the merchant site that served as the town’s “center of life” in the Plantation Era, Flook said – was reduced to charred walls and rubble.

The destruction is “pretty devastating,” said Nicholas Rajkovich, a University of Buffalo architecture professor who briefly lived on Maui in the mid-2000s.

Powered by hurricane-force winds, the wildfires on Maui nearly impossible to prepare for or combat. In Hawaii, hurricanes and floods pose more common threats.

“We certainly knew that if a fire started, we were ripe for an issue, but natural fires weren’t a major concern,” Flook said. “In terms of climate change, we were way more focused on sea rise and king tides and tsunamis.”

In photos: The scene as deadly wildfires devastate parts of Hawaii

Sometimes, buildings can be moved or raised in efforts to guard against extreme weather. But that often doesn’t work for buildings of cultural significance, which are tied to a specific location and derive their meaning from their context, Rajkovich said.

And on the whole, little can be done to protect buildings caught in the path of such a catastrophic blaze, especially wooden ones, experts said.

“Based on the images I’ve seen, it seems pretty hard to imagine what could possibly protect a building in this context,” said Daniel Barber, head of the University of Technology Sydney’s architecture department.

The cultural loss is steep. Lahaina holds architectural and historic significance, and its buildings speak to the town’s Hawaiian origins, said Bill Chapman, head of the graduate program in historic preservation at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

He is working with colleagues on a book about architectural conservation that was supposed to dive into Lahaina’s history. Now, it will require a caveat.

“We’re going to have to have a dark box in there,” he said, “to explain that Lahaina isn’t what it was.”

Most of the town’s landmarks had been painstakingly restored at least once over the decades. The Waiola Church, which had celebrated its 200th anniversary in May, had been destroyed by weather or accidental fires and rebuilt four times before: in 1858, 1894, 1947 and 1951.

And in 1919, a fire broke out that destroyed part of Lahaina. What was built in its place, Flook said, became “part of the flavor of the town,” an area people loved.

“We’ve rebuilt fallen structures from the ground up before, so it’s not impossible to redo it,” said Flook.

When they can return to town, the Lahaina Restoration Foundation staff will begin surveying the damage, starting on insurance claims and FEMA paperwork. Buildings with some stable bones left could possibly be restored; the wooden ones would have to be fully recreated, Flook said.

Eventually, preservationists will likely solicit donations and start making plans to rebuild.

For now, the focus remains on humanitarian aid.

Wong, the chef who worked at the nearly 120-year-old Pioneer Inn, described community efforts to help displaced people and coordinate donations of supplies. She was working with a group to make lunches for 2,000 people and dinners for another 2,000.

“The priority is life, is our neighbors and our friends and our family. … I can always build another restaurant,” Wong said. “We need to find safety and shelter and food and water. That is all anybody is thinking about.”

Natalie B. Compton contributed to this report.

Wildfires in Hawaii

What’s happening: After the deadly wildfire in Maui devastated the town of Lahaina, people search for their loved ones as they face the devastation of losing homes , schools and businesses .

How did the fires start? Officials have not announced a cause, though video and data shows it was probably power lines . The spread of nonnative grasses and hurricane-stoked winds could have been factors, along with the indirect influence of climate change .

What areas have been impacted? Fires burned across multiple Hawaiian islands — these maps show where . The town of Lahaina on the island of Maui suffered widespread damage, and historical landmarks across the island were damaged . These photos show the extent of the blaze .

Can I help? Many organizations are accepting donations to assist those affected by the wildfires. Visitors returning to West Maui are encouraged to practice regenerative tourism .

Coast Guard works to determine how many boats sunk in Lahaina harbor

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - The grim search continues for victims of the wildfire that decimated historic Lahaina town , where the death toll now stands at 67.

On Friday, with search-and-rescue efforts offshore complete, the Coast Guard said it was switching its focus to environmental mitigation efforts.

One key effort: Trying to determine how many boats are below the waves off Lahaina.

The next step will be figuring out the environmental impacts and eventually removing them.

When flames spread through historic Lahaina town on Tuesday night, boats in the harbor were also destroyed. Dozens jumped into the waters off Lahaina to flee the flames.

Jonah Grace Tomboc, 21, said she and her family abandoned their car, sat along the seawall and watched as their Lahaina community engulfed in flames.

“We got stuck at Front Street by the outlet mall near the Methodist church,” said Tomboc.

“Due to traffic, people started to abandon their cars leaving us stranded while the fire quickly approaches from every direction.”

“We had no choice but to leave our car as well, so we jumped into the water for our safety. Waiting there by the shore until 8:30 p.m., that’s when we decided to check our car since the fire settled down a bit, making a run for it into our car because the other vehicles have already exploded and on fire around us.”

The Coast Guard said its crews rescued 17 people from the water, including two children.

“There was smoke and fire near the near the water, but they were fortunate to have been there during the rescues at a time when the smoke lifted for them to be able to see the people who needed to be rescued,” said Capt. Asa Kirksey, U.S. Coast Guard Commander of Sector Honolulu.

MORE UPDATES:

• Death toll from Lahaina wildfire stands at 55; governor says town is ‘gone’
• Residents impacted by Maui wildfires can apply now for FEMA assistance
• Want to help those devastated by the Maui wildfires? Here’s how
• Images of devastation compel residents to pitch in: ‘We got to do something’

Copyright 2023 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.

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Photos capture sheer destruction of beloved Lahaina by Hawaii wildfires

On maui, the lahaina, pulehu and upcountry fires wreaked havoc this week, burning cars, boats, homes and entire blocks of towns to the ground..

Deadly Hawaiian wildfires change Maui landscape to 'war zone'

KHON Reporter Brigette Namata reports from the shores of Maui where the Hawaii wildfires have left the landscape charred. Namata said it's like looking at a war zone. 

LAHAINA, Hawaii – At least 93 people are confirmed dead in Hawaii as wildfires burned through parts of the Aloha State, with the hardest-hit area being the island of Maui.

On Maui, the Lahaina, Pulehu and Upcountry fires wreaked havoc this week, burning cars, boats, homes and entire blocks of towns to the ground. 

Here are some images that captured the sheer destruction caused by the wildfires .

An aerial image taken on August 10, 2023 shows a person walking past a destroyed car in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui in Lahaina, Hawaii.

(Patrick T. Fallon / AFP / Getty Images)

In the image above, a man walks by a van with its windows broken, tires melted and body dilapidated from being engulfed in flames.

An aerial perspective below showed entire homes and structures burned to the ground. 

An aerial image taken on August 10, 2023 shows destroyed homes and buildings burned to the ground in Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui, Hawaii.

In the town of Lahaina alone, thousands of structures were impacted by the fire, according to County of Maui officials.

‘TOOK EVERYTHING WITH IT’: MAUI RESIDENT RECOUNTS ESCAPE FROM RAGING WILDFIRES

The structure below may have its outside walls intact, but its roof and indoor structures seem to have been reduced to ash.

An aerial image shows a burned building in the historic Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui in Lahaina, Hawaii, on August 10, 2023.

Another structure damaged by the fires was the Lahaina Public Library. In the video below, flames can be seen burning through the roof of the building.

"Our hearts are heavy with the terrible devastation these brush fires have inflicted on Maui, and we will work with our community partners to ensure that Maui’s communities remain strong," said State Librarian Stacey A. Aldrich in a Facebook post .

Wildfires burn the roof of public library in Hawaii

In this video from Tuesday, August 8, the Lahaina Public Library on the island of Maui is on fire. 

Around many structures in Lahaina are countless trees, such as palm trees. The once lush, green fronds became shriveled and blackened as charcoal. 

One tree of note is the historic Banyan tree . At more than 150 years old, it is the oldest Banyan tree on the island of Maui, according to County of Maui officials. 

In the photo below, the historic tree appears to have been burned during this week's blaze.

An aerial image shows the historic Banyan tree surrounded by burned cars in Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui in Lahaina, Hawaii, on August 10, 2023.

BEFORE-AND-AFTER SATELLITE IMAGES OF MAUI AFTER DEADLY WIND-DRIVEN BRUSHFIRES

Vessels on the water were not safe from the flames, either. The boat below, while still afloat, had much of its upper deck destroyed by the wildfires.

An aerial image taken on August 10, 2023 shows a burned boat in the Lahaina Harbor in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui, Hawaii. 

As of Thursday morning, Lahaina residents remained without power. Officials with the County of Maui said that state and county crews are working to clear trees and debris from roads and other areas.

An aerial image taken on August 10, 2023 shows destroyed homes and buildings burned to the ground in Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui, Hawaii.  (Patrick T. Fallon / AFP)

An aerial image taken on August 10, 2023 shows a person walking down Front Street past destroyed buildings burned to the ground in Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui, Hawaii. (PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP)

An aerial image taken on August 10, 2023 shows destroyed cars in Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui, Hawaii. (Patrick T. Fallon / AFP)

An aerial view of Lahaina after wildfires burned through the town on the Hawaiian island of Maui, on August 10, 2023. (Patrick T. Fallon / AFP)

An aerial view shows destroyed homes and buildings that burned to the ground around the harbor and Front Street in the historic Lahaina Town in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui in Lahaina, Hawaii, on August 10, 2023. (Patrick T. Fallon / AFP)

An aerial view shows the historic Banyan Tree along with destroyed homes, boats, and buildings burned to the ground in the historic Lahaina town in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui in Lahaina, Hawaii, on August 10, 2023.  (Patrick T. Fallon / AFP)

An aerial view shows destruction caused by a wildfire in Lahaina, on the Hawaiian island of Maui, on August 10, 2023. (Patrick T. Fallon / AFP)

An aerial image taken on August 10, 2023 shows a burned hillside above Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui in Lahaina, Hawaii. (Patrick T. Fallon / AFP)

An aerial image shows a burned hillside above Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui in Lahaina, Hawaii, on August 10, 2023. (Patrick T. Fallon / AFP)

They added that the three fires responsible for damages across Maui are at varying degrees of containment. 

HAWAII WILDFIRES: HOW TO HELP THOSE IMPACTED ON MAUI, BIG ISLAND

The Lahaina Fire was reported to be 80% contained, the Pulehu Fire was 70% contained and the Upcountry Maui Fire is pending further assessment, according to officials.

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Lahaina Emerges From ‘Devastating’ Fire As Relief Begins To Arrive

A major disaster declaration would unlock additional federal resources.

LAHAINA, Maui — Large sections of Lahaina town have been altered almost beyond recognition by the wildfire that raged Tuesday night.

By Wednesday morning, the United Methodist Church had been burned to its stone foundation and many homes and businesses were down to floor level, some with their door frames still standing.

The full human toll of the fire is still not clear.

Maui County late Wednesday confirmed at least 36 people had died in the Lahaina fire, a dramatic upward revision from the six announced earlier in the day.

Roads in the town remain choked by abandoned vehicles, many burned down to their chassis and standing on their tire rims. Cars appear to have been parked in a hurry on the sidewalks with doors open.

The Lahaina Public Library has gone, but the banyan tree in the center of town is still standing despite damage to its trunks and limbs.

Wednesday morning Erika Castillo, 21, headed in the direction of her car. She had packed all of her belongings to flee Tuesday night, but was forced to leave the vehicle. Her boyfriend Mikel Reyes, 25, said “we’ve got to go check if she’s got anything left.”

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Castillo, who cleans houses for a living, had safely located her family members and when she found her car she stretched her arms out in relief.

“Nobody really knows how it started. It was a fat fire,” Reyes said, as he and Castillo packed up their remaining belongings from their home with help from Castillo’s aunt Addrianna Castillo.

Adam Ferdette, from Kihei, had been working as a subcontractor for Hawaiian Electric in Lahaina Tuesday replacing telephone poles that had been brought down by the high winds.

When he returned Wednesday, the replacement poles had been toppled by the wildfire and were still smoking.

“The whole town was devastated, Lahaina was decimated,” said Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke Wednesday evening after inspecting the damage from the air. “It was shocking.”

The three Maui fires — besides Lahaina there are fires in Pulehu and Upcountry — had been contained late Wednesday, said Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, but the 120 firefighters were still watching for flareups.

The county remains in a “search and rescue” mode, according to Maui Mayor Richard Bissen, and an investigation into the origins of the Lahaina fire is not yet underway.

The flyover of Lahaina town and harbor showed extensive damage to at least 271 buildings, and a federal team is also on the ground assisting with the search and rescue efforts. U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard are operating along the West Maui coast, the county said.

In the Lahaina harbor area all the docks burned, and small debris fires still burned in the harbor. The debris has already disrupted interisland travel and efforts to get relief supplies in.

The Maui-Lanai passenger ferry, has halted operations, a state lawmaker said. “There is a mass loss of boats,” said Sen. Lynn DeCoite, who represents both islands. “We don’t know where those boats that sank are and if we have a ferry service coming in, we can’t have unknown wreckage.”

How Fires Developed Tuesday

Hundreds of acres on the Big Island and on Maui had already burned when Luke issued an emergency proclamation Tuesday, as Hurricane Dora passed 500 miles to the south but still fanning ground conditions ripe for fire.

The Maui wildfires developed on multiple fronts during the course of the day.

Maui County officials reported that a brush fire that had started before 1 a.m. in the Olinda Road area of Kula, had led to the evacuation of 54 residents from their homes by 5 a.m.

At 6.37 a.m. a brush fire was reported in the area of Lahainaluna Road and three minutes later the area around the Lahaina Intermediate School was evacuated. That fire was declared 100% contained by 9 a.m. the county said, but a flareup at 3.30 p.m. caused a closure of the Lahaina Bypass.

By 9.45 p.m. the county reported multiple structures had burned and multiple evacuations were in place in Lahaina and Upcountry Maui.

Luke said that residents know to prepare well in advance for hurricanes, but not for simultaneous wildfires.

“We never anticipated in this state that a hurricane which did not make impact on our islands will cause this type of wildfires, wildfires that wiped out communities, wildfires that wiped out businesses, wildfires that destroyed homes,” she said.

Power outages have carried on into Wednesday evening, with over 10,000 people still without power, according to Hawaiian Electric’s Maui County outage map. Most of those were concentrated around Lahaina. Cell and internet services remained severely interrupted.

Plans to evacuate visitors by air evolved during the day, Maui County Communications Director Mahina Martin said, and by 9 p.m. Wednesday evening, some had started to arrive at the Honolulu Convention Center on Oahu. Some 600 people would overnight at Maui’s airport awaiting a flight Thursday morning.

In addition to the official response, concerned community members had congregated at Maalaea Harbor early Wednesday morning, transferring everything from pallets of bottled water to diapers, canned food and bedding from trucks and pickups.

Others were looking for ways to get to Lahaina, offering money to the crews to hitch an hours-long boat ride to find family and friends.

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The boats sailed to Kanaapali to both drop off the goods and pick up people stranded along the coast.

The sheer amount of support and goodwill that inundated Maui County was heartening, according to Martin, the county’s communications director.

Denver Coon of Trilogy Excursions picked up 25 people from Kaanapali on Wednesday afternoon, while another of the company’s boats picked up several more later in the day.

Many of the residents had not seen the devastation at Lahaina until they sailed back around the coast.

“There were a lot of people crying,” Coon said. “Their homes are gone and, for a lot of people, their jobs are gone. The view from the ocean: There’s nothing left standing, except for a few frames.”

Coon’s outfit was among many making trips back and forth around the coast, many of which are planning to continue shipping supplies on Thursday.

Civil Beat reporter Brittany Lyte contributed to this report.

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.

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Lawyers blame 3 entities for Lahaina fire

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CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / 2023

Maui County officials have yet to release the findings of a federal and county investigation into the cause of the Aug. 8, 2023, wildfire in Lahaina. Pictured is the mauka view of Aholo Road from Front Street a few days after the deadly fire.

Attorneys representing over 160 property insurance companies claim their investigation has found that the Maui wildfire responsible for the deaths of 102 people was caused by an aging, wooden utility pole overloaded with telecommunications equipment that snapped in high winds in Lahaina, causing it to land on neglected, overgrown brush across from Lahaina Intermediate School.

The insurance companies allege that “the negligent, reckless, or unlawful conduct” by land owner Kamehameha Schools, Hawaiian Electric Co., and telecommunications companies Spectrum Oceanic, Charter Communications and Oceanic Time Warner triggered the fire on Aug. 8, 2023. They claim the fire that started in overgrown brush later reignited and shot embers into the sky and triggered a path of flames all the way to Lahaina’s historic Front Street and the water’s edge, where panicked evacuees leapt into the ocean to escape the inferno.

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Over a year since the fires, Maui County officials have yet to release the findings of a federal and county investigation into the cause of wildfires in Lahaina and Upcountry Maui, where nearly two dozen properties burned that same day.

But a filing by the insurance companies’ lawyers in Honolulu Circuit Court that seeks a jury trial places the blame on Hawaiian Electric and the telecom companies for ignoring warnings and industry standards, and for following a policy the lawyers called “a ‘wait until it breaks’ plan of maintaining their wooden power poles and overhead power lines as a cost-saving policy instead of performing necessary preemptive maintenance and repairs to prevent its wooden power poles and overhead power lines from failing, breaking, and/or severing during high-wind events.”

Before the fires, Kameha­meha Schools — which the lawyers refer to as “The Bishop Estate” — had failed a 2020 “Fire Brush Inspection” conducted by unidentified “local authorities,” according to the court document.

“As a result, The Bishop Estate was ordered to construct a firebreak on its property,” it said. “The same parcel of land was reinspected in September of 2023, shortly after the Lahaina Fire, and local officials found that The Bishop Estate had failed to properly maintain the firebreaks it had ordered three years earlier, specifically citing its ‘[f]ailure to maintain firebreak off homes along the south of Lahainaluna Rd.’ Furthermore, upon information and belief, local authorities found multiple other fire code violations on the property, including a ‘brush height’ in excess of 18 inches, failure to construct a 100 ft. fire break, and a finding that the ‘extent of growth’ on the Defendant’s land was ‘considered a fire hazard.’

“Had the Landowner Defendants taken reasonable steps to construct and/or maintain legally required firebreaks on their property, the Lahaina Fire would have been contained. … This mismanagement of property increased the severity of the Lahaina Fire and contributed to the death and destruction that followed.”

Only Kamehameha Schools responded to a request for comment, but did not address the allegations that it played a role in triggering the fire.

In their court document, the lawyers for the insurance companies laid out a chronology of the events leading up to the Aug. 8, 2023, fire in Lahaina beginning with the night before when the “Olinda Fire” broke out in Upcountry Maui, which should have prompted Hawaiian Electric to act “immediately” to ensure that its electrical systems had not been compromised.

The next morning, Aug. 8, according to the document and attorney interviews with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Hawaiian Electric transmission lines “tripped offline” when one of its utility poles near Hooahua Street behind Lahaina Intermediate School “split in two, causing the collapse of the upper section of the pole and resulting in a chain reaction of stress and strain along the Utility Defendants’ electrical conductors connected between Pole No. 7A and Pole No. 25 — located across Lahainaluna Road, and further downhill between Pole No. 25, and Pole No. 24. At Pole No. 25 one of the affixed distribution powerlines severed and fell to the ground” directly across from a neighborhood on the other side of Lahainaluna Road.

Then, at 6 a.m., Hawaiian Electric “manually re-energized the transmission line providing power to a circuit that included the downed distribution lines at Poles No. 7A, 24 and 25.”

Around 6:30 a.m., a brush fire was reported in overgrown, non-native buffelgrass on Kamehameha Schools’ land triggered by the fallen and reenergized Hawaiian Electric pole.

“Subsequently, at 6:39 a.m., the same transmission line which the Utility Defendants had manually re-energized, tripped offline again.”

By 9:30 a.m., Maui firefighters had the fire contained.

But hot spots around the uneven terrain continued to smolder after firefighters standing watch were inexplicably called away, attorney Mark Grotefeld told the Star-Advertiser.

Hours later, in the late afternoon, high winds and plenty of “fuel loads” caused the fire to “rekindle … and pop into the open pasture,” Grotefeld said.

By 3:50 p.m., the fire had jumped the Lahaina Bypass Road and was threatening surrounding neighborhoods, where residents were hosing down their roofs.

“Embers were flying into houses,” Grotefeld said. “After that, it was ‘Katie, bar the door.’”

The fire raced makai toward Lahaina town, where downed utility poles blocked residents trying to flee in their vehicles. Instead they found themselves in a gridlock of panic that forced people to jump into the ocean for hours as embers rained down on their heads and boats exploded around them, several survivors have told the Star-Advertiser.

According to the court document, “By early evening that same day, desperate local residents cut off from escape, were witnessed jumping into the ocean to evade its fury. In its wake, the Lahaina Fire tragically claimed the lives of 100 people and injured dozens more.”

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Published on August 9th, 2023 | by Editor

Tragedy in Lahaina

Published on August 9th, 2023 by Editor -->

Amid the death and destruction due to wildfires in Maui, aerial video show the town of Lahaina having suffered significant damage, which includes Lahaina Yacht Club on Front Street and nearby Lahaina Harbor. Lahaina Town is a historic whaling village and tourism hotspot in Maui, Hawaii.

Tags: Lahaina fire , Lahaina Yacht Club , tragedy

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