Hawaii governor vows to block land grabs as fire-ravaged Maui rebuilds: An analysis of the eruption of a historic island community
It was reported that the governor of Hawaii would keep the land in local hands when Maui rebuilds from the deadly wildfire that decimated a historic island community.
“I can’t explain why people don’t trust people,” Bissen said. “The people who were trying to put out these fires lived in those homes — 25 of our firefighters lost their homes. You think they were doing a halfway job?”
He said that the announcement by the mayor of Maui on Aug. 8 lulled the population into a sense of safety and made him distrust the officials.
The family’s home was destroyed by fire and the residents were not given earlier warnings to leave.
Herman Andaya, administrator of the agency, uses a navigation term that means toward the mountains or inland in Hawaiian to mean that people would have gone mauka. “If that was the case, then they would have gone into the fire.” There are no sirens in the mountains, where the fire was spreading downhill, he said.
Source: Hawaii governor vows to block land grabs as fire-ravaged Maui rebuilds
Land grabs in the Maui valley: Josh Green’s comments on the state attorney general’s memo and the case for a morgue unit in Maui
Josh Green said Wednesday that he had ordered the state attorney general to do something about land transactions in Lahaina. He acknowledged the move will likely face legal challenges.
Green’s goal was to make sure that no one was the victim of a land grab. “People are right now traumatized. Please do not approach them with an offer to buy their land. Do not approach their families saying they’ll be much better off if they make a deal. We’re not going to let it happen.
Also Wednesday, the number of dead reached 111, and Maui police said nine victims had been identified, and the families of five had been notified. A mobile morgue unit with additional coroners arrived Tuesday to help process and identify remains.
West Maui, Hawaii, is at severe risk for wildfire: Governor vows to block land grabs as fire-ravaged Maui rebuilds
Hawaii state officials know a lot of them. The government’s own reports have shown that West Maui is at severe risk for wildfire, its foothills covered in dry, invasive grasses that are highly flammable. Previous recommendations included improving evacuation plans, managing dry vegetation around towns and clearing defensible space around houses.
Richy Palalay, who is a native of Lahaina, said Saturday that locals have been worried about the town being more oriented towards wealthy visitors since the fires started last week.
Many people were struggling to afford a home in Hawaii prior to the fire. Statewide, a typical starter home costs over $1 million, while the average renter pays 42% of their income for housing, according to a Forbes Housing analysis, the highest ratio in the country by a wide margin.
The 2020 census found more native Hawaiians living on the mainland than the islands for the first time in history, driven in part by a search for cheaper housing.
When Green took office, he made affordable housing a priority appointing a czar for the issue and requesting $1 billion for housing programs. Since the fires, he’s also suggested acquiring land in Lahaina for the state to build workforce housing as well as a memorial.
The signs of recovery emerged as the public schools reopened, students were welcomed from Lahaina, and traffic resumed on a major road.
Sacred Hearts School in Lahaina was destroyed, and Principal Tonata Lolesio said lessons would resume in the coming weeks at another Catholic school. She said it was important for students to be with their friends, teachers and books, and not constantly thinking about the tragedy.
“I’m hoping to at least try to get some normalcy or get them in a room where they can continue to learn or just be in another environment where they can take their minds off of that,” she said.
Source: Hawaii governor vows to block land grabs as fire-ravaged Maui rebuilds
The West Maui Fires: The First Community Emergency Response Center, and Why a Big Disaster Can Happen if the Emergency Service Network is Done
According to the Hawaii Department of Education, three surviving schools in Lahaina are still being assessed.
Hayashi said in the update that there was still a lot of work to be done but that the classrooms and campuses were in good shape. We grieve the many lives lost in the early stages of the recovery effort.
Deanne Criswell, administrator for FEMA, said that the agency’s first disaster recovery center on Maui was an important first step in helping residents get information about assistance. They also can go there for updates on aid applications.
Maui officials say the public would have been confused not to turn on the sirens. People, they say, associate the sirens with tsunami warnings and could have run into the hills instead. It was the direction of the flames that made the difference.
As the community in West Maui begins a slow recovery after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in the last century, one of the biggest questions is how a similar tragedy can be prevented.
There are no precautions that can stop a fire. However, fire experts say the tragedy shows communities cannot ignore their own warnings.
Alex would have packed his car with items and called his parents if he heard the sirens that morning. The only roads out of town were jammed when he and his neighbors drove away.
Government officials instead turned on the Wireless Emergency Alert system, which blasts a message to people’s phones, like AMBER Alerts for missing children. Many residents NPR spoke to didn’t receive it. High winds, power outages and flames took out the cell service network. In the state of California, there was a similar occurrence in the Camp Fire.
In order to clarify the alert, a number of cities install new siren networks that broadcast voice messages when there are emergencies, like wildfires in California. In Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, the sirens play pre-recorded messages to alert residents of a volcano, a earthquake, or a storm, before instructing them to listen to the radio for more information.
Disaster response experts stress that cities need to have multiple strategies to alert and evacuate people safely, especially ones that don’t rely entirely on cell networks.
Gordon Firestein’s FireWise Program: The Loss of a California Firefighter’s Home in West Maui and the Challenges to Stop Fires
As one of the people who has worked to prevent fires near Lahaina, it’s not easy for Gordon Firestein to look at the view from his house: a dark black burn scar and the blue Pacific Ocean beyond.
After 15 years of living in West Maui, Firestein decided the hillsides were too similar to his home state of California. Some of the former sugarcane fields have been overrun with weeds. He and his friends joined the FireWise program. Run by the non-profit National Fire Protection Association, it provides a blueprint for communities to become better prepared for wildfires.
Firestein says they’ve educated neighbors about trimming the dry vegetation directly around a home to create defensible space. But Hawaii doesn’t have mandatory rules that compel homeowners to do it.
States like California require owners of high risk houses to clear brush and state fire agencies inspect them. In San Diego, if a homeowner doesn’t comply, the city hires a contractor to do the work and puts a lien on the property to recoup the cost.
Large areas at the edge of towns needs to be cleared of dry grass to make them more resistant to fire. On the outskirts of Lahaina, rows of houses are nestled in the hills. After the fire, some residents said the problem had been ignored for years.
Chris Arnold lost his home in Lahaina. I don’t want to hear excuses anymore and so I want to give us some fire breaks.
Some of the projects were completed, but not the majority, especially given that grasses grow back and must be maintained every year. West Maui, like other fire-prone regions, has struggled to find the funding to manage vegetation.
“We didn’t find the funds or capacity to do the full scale of what we wanted to do, so that’s why the scope and level and amount that needed to be done was never really reached, because we actually never found funds or capacity to do the full scale of what
Source: 3 strategies Maui can adopt from other states to help prevent dangerous wildfires
California and other states have passed wildfire building codes, and they’re paving the road toward better protecting the island communities from Maui fires
Fire researchers have documented how embers can get caught on wood-shingled roofs and siding, fall into gutters with leaves or even get blown into attic vents, igniting the building from the inside.
California and a handful of other states have passed wildfire building codes, requiring new homes to use fire-resistant materials if they’re built in risky areas. The rules cover roofs, siding, windows and ventilation, since attic vents can be protected by covering them with a fine mesh screen. Research shows for new construction, it’s not substantially more expensive to build that way.
Home building associations have been resistant to some states’ proposed wildfire building codes. There is hope that changing will be embraced by lawmakers, given the heavy toll of Maui’s fires.
Wara suggests that communities start investing in those strategies and that people be given assistance to do them. They also need to be pushed to take the steps that will protect the whole community from a wildfire.”
“I really want to believe that we will rally the way that we do so well as an island state and use this toward progress, improvement, and all the things that felt too big to deal with,” Pickett says.