“These fire-prone invasive species fill every void everywhere: roadsides, between communities, between people’s homes,” said Elizabeth Pickett, co-executive director of the association. Hawaii Wildfire Management Organizationtold WIRED last week. “Right now, 26 percent of her state is covered with these fire-prone grasses.”
With much of Maui not only hit by drought, but also in the middle of the dry season, these vegetation have turned into craters. “Wild landscapes fuel the fire,” says Pyne. “Hot, dry, windy, and needing a lot of fuel is the recipe for big fires. And that’s what you got here.”
In Hawaii, as in places along the West Coast, more and more people are moving into the danger zone, the Wilderness-Urban Interface (WUI). This is where nature collides and blends with human settlements. That is why Paradise blazes through the piles of pine needles and other dead leaves around the city, blazing rapidly and devastatingly, destroying 19,000 buildings. On Maui, invasive grasses act as promoters. “Almost all communities in Hawaii are on the interface between wilderness and city,” Pickett continued. “So we are just like a WUI state because all of our developments are either adjacent to or surrounded by wilderness areas.”
Such an interface would not need to discover a vaccine against wildfire. it is already known. Building codes in place in the 20th century have reduced the number of large urban fires, but infrastructure is still important. Strong winds can collide with power lines and cause fires. Electrical failures have been identified as the cause of the Camp and Tubbs fires, among other recent fires. Authorities are still investigating the cause of the wildfires that devoured Lahaina, but some speculate that it may have been the cause. electric wire too. Burying power lines is expensive, but such investments can go a long way in saving structures and lives.
And in modern times, another big factor is potential fuel management. In places like California, that means removing dead bushes. In Hawaii, it is an invasive grass. Humans are unpredictable factors that cause fires, such as selfish fireworks and cigarettes, so when humans make mistakes, burning less fuel is paramount.
Fundamental social change is also needed to save cities from excessive wildfires. If a tropical town like Lahaina could go up in flames, which other cities are equally at risk and wholly unprepared? thinks about preparing for events within the framework of historical past events,” says Koba. “This is unprecedented for Lahaina.
One of the biggest risks of urban wildfires is that residents can be caught between fast-growing fires and limitations in urban infrastructure such as narrow, winding roads and lack of escape routes. is. People died in their cars trying to get out of Paradise, and the same thing seems to have happened in Lahaina. “We’ve known for a long time that sometimes it’s necessary to evacuate a car even in a hurricane with advance warning, but it’s very difficult because traffic jams occur quickly. It’s a problem,” says risk communication researcher Anne Bostrom. University of Washington. “When you have a city where the wilderness meets the city, but you have some kind of complicated transportation system, and you can’t get out and about freely, you have a problem.”
Saving other cities from Lahaina’s fate will require a battle on multiple fronts, including managing fuel to restore wild landscapes, improving electrical infrastructure to minimize fires, and strictly communicating evacuation plans. becomes. “This is the society we have created,” says Pine. “And these are the kinds of fires that society has to deal with.”
