37 Fires Along One Maui Road This Year Alone Have Residents Of Nearby Town On Edge

Over the years, the once idyllic Holomua Road used by pedestrians and cyclists on the north shore of Maui has become a magnet for abandoned vehicles, homeless camps, dumped trash and drug use.

Now nearby residents say they are concerned about an even bigger problem along the 3-mile stretch. Fires. Lots of them.

From Jan. 1 through Tuesday, crews from the Paia Fire Station have responded to 37 calls along the road for 29 brush fires, an unauthorized burn, six torched vehicles and even a cabin cruiser that went up in flames, according to the Maui Fire Department.

That’s about one fire every three days, and only seven less than the 44 fire calls the department responded to in the area over the previous five years combined.

“Right now, we’re at a crisis point,” Teya Penniman told the Maui County Council during a recent budget meeting in the Paia Community Center.

She was joined by other Paia residents and business owners who voiced their worries that a fire along the road could destroy their nearby small town like a quick-moving firestorm did Aug. 8 in Lahaina.

Maui Deputy Fire Chief Jeff Giesea said Tuesday that while it is an “alarming increase” in calls, the fires all have been handled in the early stages.

“But it’s been wet and it’s green out there,” Giesea said. “There is a real concern that when the weather gets hotter and drier that one of these fires could take off and become a problem.”

Based on the prevailing north-northeast winds, the Paia neighborhoods and the quaint historic town of about 2,200 residents dotted with art galleries, restaurants and boutique shops could be in the direct path of a fire that begins along Holomua Road, less than 2 miles away.

Such a fire could reach Paia in less than an hour, Giesea said.

Many residents remember a scare in late 2019 when a fire began near Holomua Road and moved toward Baldwin Avenue, causing a power outage and forcing people to evacuate. About 600 acres burned, according to The Maui News.

And just one day before the disastrous Aug. 8 wildfires on Maui, a blaze that started near Holomua Road burned 7 acres.

‘We Need To Have A Super Plan’

County Council member Nohelani U’u-Hodgins, who represents Paia, said the recent string of fires is “maybe a good wake-up call that we need to have a super plan and not wait.”

Responding to earlier calls for action by residents, she organized a March 21 meeting that included Maui Emergency Management Agency Adminstrator Amos Lonokailua-Hewett, Fire Chief Brad Ventura, Police Chief John Pelletier, Maui County Homeless Coordinator Naomi Crozier and Jen Mayden with the county’s new Office of Recovery.

The meeting also included leadership from Mahi Pono, a local farming company that owns most of the undeveloped land around the town. This includes more than 4,000 acres along both sides of the entire length of Holomua Road — with the exception of the county-owned 22-acre property that is the site of the old Maui High School and now is being partly leased by the Maui Invasive Species Committee.

The parties discussed a variety of topics, including evacuation planning and routes, public messaging and communication, and fire mitigation efforts.

“Everyone is working together to tackle this problem,” said Sgt. Mark Crowe, MPD’s chief of staff who also attended the meeting. “We need more operations like this.”

It is likely all 37 fires along Holomua Road this year were intentionally set or accidentally started by human activity, Giesea said. There was a report of a person throwing fireworks in the area, he said.

Residents, including Old Maui High School’s caretaker Mike Ade who lives on the property, believe an arsonist is setting some of the fires along the gravel half of the road.

“I think there is a fire bug who just wants to start a fire and have fun,” Ade said.

Police have not determined if there is an arsonist, Crowe said.

Meanwhile, efforts are under way to clean up the road.

“For any place, the more you can make it look tidy and cared for, the less likely it will attract people to make mischief,” Crowe said.

Over the past few weeks, police have tagged and coordinated removal of the approximately 60 abandoned or derelict cars. The number was down from about 90 vehicles a few months earlier, said Penniman, acting manager of the Maui Invasive Species Committee.

‘They Just Leave All That Rubbish There’

The road, which meets Hana Highway just past Mama’s Fish House, has been known as a place for people to set up “chop shops,” where they disassemble stolen or abandoned vehicles for parts to sell.

“People drop the cars, work on the cars and just create havoc because they just leave all that rubbish there,” said Melvin Johnson, a retired MPD officer who now works for Maui County on its Clean and Safe Program in Paia. “Now you get a fire hazard.”

Johnson said it is likely at least some of the vehicles were torched to burn evidence.

In the past month about 30 vehicles have been removed by the county’s Department of Environmental Management. The police are coordinating the cleanup of left-behind encampments and other trash with the county’s Public Works Department.

The police also are asking homeless people who are living in tents or vehicles along the road to stay on the north side, so if a fire is started accidentally from cooking or another reason, the road can act as a fire break.

Even the cows are doing their part by trampling and eating the pasture grass that makes up most of Mahi Pono’s land in this area, which is used by its subsidiary Kulolio Ranch.

As part of the company’s internal brush mitigation plan, crews recently have mowed a strip of pasture grass about 100 feet wide where possible along the Paia side of Holomua Road, and they plan to mow a strip 40 to 50 feet wide as a buffer to residential areas. These firebreaks are mowed about twice a year at 5 to 6 inches high, much lower than the 18 inches that the county considers a hazard, said Mark Vaught, Mahi Pono’s director of water resources.

“We want to make sure that we’re not contributing to any kind of catastrophe,” he said.

Similarities To Lahaina

Giesea warns that people should not have a false sense of security because of all the precautions. He said small- to medium-sized bits of burning material can rise from convection currents and blow downwind to start a fire in a new area.

MEMA and the fire department also are working with Mahi Pono to make old cane roads accessible in emergencies for fire trucks and public evacuation. Vaught said keys for gates are kept by the company’s around-the-clock security and have been given to the fire department.

MEMA also is working with other partners on building evacuation plans for the entire county, with Paia a priority. This includes using computer modeling software called LifeSim, which the Army Corps of Engineers now is using in Lahaina to show how various primary, secondary and additional evacuation routes would work in an emergency and how to avoid gridlock that trapped people from escaping during the Aug. 8 fire and contributed to the death toll of 101 people.

Paia’s similarities to Lahaina include closely packed old wooden houses, limited evacuation routes and many narrow dead-end roads. And at the town’s main junction of Hana Highway and Baldwin Avenue, traffic routinely backs up at all hours of the day.

Lonokailua-Hewett said the county is considering partnering with a private contractor to create these evacuation plans faster, and with community input.

The Paia fire crews have been distributing Ready, Set, Go! pamphlets that are used by many communities around the country to help people create their own wildfire action plan. They cover how to create buffer zones around homes and businesses.

The fire department also has been working with the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization to help identify and map the high hazard areas throughout Maui County, although Giesea said it already is known that Paia is one of them.

“There is a greatly heightened awareness and motivation on the part of the public to be prepared,” Giesea said.

Four More Fire Inspectors Sought

The department’s Fire Prevention Bureau has started a program called WUI, which stands for wildland urban interface. Communities can work with the bureau and the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization to abate hazards, make plans for themselves and become a Firewise Community.

To help handle the large number of requests for this program and other mitigation efforts, the fire department has requested four more fire inspectors in next year’s county budget.

MEMA currently is updating the 1,044-page Maui Hazard Mitigation Plan of 2020 that contains critical projects that could be eligible for federal funding.

An updated plan is an important piece for protecting the county moving forward, and specifically for Paia, Lonokailua-Hewett said.

The fire department and MEMA met Monday with personnel from the National Weather Service to try to figure out what “really should be our triggers for action” in Hawaii. A standard Red Flag Warning in the county includes winds of 20 mph or more.

“Well, that’s a normal day on Maui,” Giesea said.

‘No Hesitation On Using The Public Siren System’

One issue that can’t be resolved anytime soon is the limited access to water along Holomua Road. There are no fire hydrants and reservoirs that existed during the sugar and pineapple era are mostly dry.

While the ocean is close, Giesea explained that a helicopter would have to pass over Hana Highway to dump seawater on a fire in that area. Regulations of the Federal Aviation Administration require shutting down the highway — a main evacuation route — while water is flown over it.

To help deal with this issue, the fire department has preplanned locations where dip tanks, nicknamed pumpkins for their orange color, can be deployed for use by helicopters. The fire department leases Air One from Windward Aviation, but also has access to three to four others in its fleet in an emergency.

“We have a fairly robust aerial firefighting capability here on Maui for the size of our community,” Giesea said.

The department also would make use of a Kahului-based water tanker, which can hold 3,500 gallons of water — enough to fill Paia Station’s main Engine 2 about five times or its Mini-2 that has offroad capabilities about 11 times. Trucks carrying water also could come from the Makawao and Kula stations.

Ade, a former firefighter, said there is availability of limited water on the Old Maui High School property to try to protect the historic wooden buildings and its other structures, the only ones along the road.

Another high priority with wildfire season coming up is improving communications between agencies and with the public, Lonokailua-Hewett said. MEMA is working to improve messaging through the national Emergency Alert System, Wireless Emergency Alerts through mobile carriers, the MyAlerts app, the public siren system and on Maui’s radio stations.

After the Lahaina fire, MEMA Administrator Herman Andaya resigned following sharp criticism for choosing not to activate the warning sirens.

“We had a comms meeting today with all of our response partners about trying to get situation awareness to come up the chain quicker,” Lonokailua-Hewett said. “I can tell you on my end that there will be no hesitation on using the public siren system if necessary, when necessary, and communicating earlier than later.”

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