Federal Investigators Still Won’t Say What Caused The Lahaina Fire

Two months after the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shared its findings on the cause of the Lahaina wildfire with Maui County officials, the agency continues to withhold that information from the public. 

The bureau’s spokesman said he is mystified as to why.

Jason Chudy, a bureau spokesman in Seattle, said he couldn’t explain the months-long delay in releasing what is supposed to be the definitive report on what caused the conflagration, which killed 102 people and destroyed much of Lahaina more than a year ago.

“It’s at headquarters,” Chudy said of the ATF’s written report. “I don’t know where it is in the process.”

“I don’t know who’s got the report now,” he said. “All I can say is we expect it to be done soon.”

While the ATF report languishes in bureaucracy, Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez on Friday plans to release the second phase of her comprehensive report on the Maui wildfires. 

Produced by the Fire Safety Research Institute, it’s expected to include an analysis of the state and county’s responses to the fire. 

Friday’s report follows a first report that Lopez released in April. Titled the “Lahaina Fire Comprehensive Timeline Report,” the 375-page report included a minute-by-minute chronology of the fire’s devastating progress through Lahaina on Aug. 8, 2023. It was based on thousands of data points, including police and fire department dispatch records; communications among police, firefighters and emergency management officials; reports from Hawaiian Electric Co., and hundreds of photographs and videos from residents with time stamps showing when the images were recorded.

One thing missing was the cause of the fire. The report’s authors said the ATF’s report would address that.

In late June, Chudy told Civil Beat that ATF officials had been on Maui that week briefing the Maui Fire Department on the ATF’s findings and answering questions. Chudy said then that the ATF planned to post the report on its website, but only after Maui County released its official report, which would rely on the ATF’s findings.

Asked when that would be, Chudy said, “It’s all Maui Fire Department’s call.”

At the time, Chris Stankis, a fire department spokesman, said the department didn’t have an estimated date for finishing its report.

In July, Maui Fire Chief Brad Ventura issued a statement saying the ATF report wasn’t complete and that his department could not finish its work until the ATF report was complete. Now Chudy says the delay is all the ATF’s fault.

While the official cause report is still in the hands of the ATF, investigations by lawyers for individual victims and the global insurance industry point to the same cause: Pole 7A, a wooden utility pole laden with power and utility lines that fell and parked a fire early on Aug. 8. 

According to lawsuits filed by insurers and fire victims, when Pole 7A fell it set off a chain of events that climaxed with an unstoppable 20-foot wall of wind-driven flames sweeping into Lahaina that afternoon. 

Hawaiian Electric Industries has acknowledged its power lines sparked the early morning blaze, but has said it was deemed extinguished by firefighters and that another afternoon fire of unknown origin was the one that the destroyed much of Lahaina. 

Lawyers for the insurers and victims have argued that the morning fire was never fully extinguished and was reignited by afternoon winds, a narrative supported by the attorney general’s timeline report. It shows that that the fires were in the same location and that the afternoon fire started around 2:55 p.m., about 40 minutes after the morning fire was said to be extinguished at 2:17 p.m. 

But when releasing their initial report the attorney general’s investigators said it’s the ATF’s responsibility to determine what happened between 2:17 p.m. and 2:55 p.m.

Chudy has said the plan is for Maui County to use information in the ATF report in the county’s own report on the cause and origin of the fire and include the entire ATF report as an appendix. ATF also will post its report in its entirety on the ATF website, he said.

Chudy said the fault for the delay lies with the ATF.

“It’s all on us,” he said.