Hawaii Is Entering A Dangerous Fire Season. Here’s What Will Be Different Post-Lahaina

As Hawaii enters its first wildfire season since the deadly Aug. 8 fires in Lahaina, emergency responders and state officials say they’re using lessons learned from the Maui tragedy to better prepare for what forecasters say is a high-risk year for significant fires.

On Oahu and Kauai, fire departments will deploy more engines, tankers and firefighters at the first sign of a wildfire in hopes that gives them a better chance at containing it. State transportation officials are spending $9 million to clear nearly 500 acres of fire breaks in dry, fire-prone regions.

Emergency personnel on Kauai say they’ll now activate their emergency operations center when a red flag warning is issued instead of waiting for a fire to appear to take that step.

And the islands’ two largest power suppliers, Hawaiian Electric Co. and Kauai Island Utility Cooperative, have new protocols in place that include potentially shutting down parts of the grid in advance when it’s too dry and gusty — and the risk of sparking a wildfire is especially high.

Those early moves will surely help Hawaii face the growing risks, advocates say. However, there’s still much more to do long-term to protect the isolated, island state against the threat of catastrophic wildfire. That includes purchasing new and improved fire engines and tankers, boosting efforts to remove the sprawling, invasive grasses that fuel Hawaii’s wildland blazes, and recruiting and persuading more community members to join in the effort.

“I don’t think in my entire career I thought that we would have this elevated commitment across the board” to curb local wildfire risks, nonprofit Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization Co-Director Elizabeth Pickett said Friday as the new, elevated fire season got underway.

That post-Lahaina interest in wildfire mitigation is encouraging but the islands still lack critical fire breaks across vast tracts of land overrun with dead and dry vegetation, she added. “That’s the part I think we could really shore up for this dry season.”

County fire chiefs and emergency planners stress that they won’t be able to tackle the problem alone.

“What we learned on Maui is educating the community about what they can do,” Honolulu Fire Department Chief Sheldon Hao said. “You cannot just look at government. We’re asking the community to help themselves.”

Getting Communities Prepared

On the Big Island, Hawaii Fire Department Chief Kazuo Todd is looking to work more closely with the community on fire-related policies such as building codes, evacuation routes and emergency planning before a wildfire ever sparks.

“It’s not as easy as waiting for the 911 call to come. We have to be reaching out to the community on a deeper level,” Todd said at a Waimea Community Association town hall meeting Thursday.

At a town hall meeting last month on Oahu, Mayor Rick Blangiardi told residents that the Aug. 8 wildfires combined with the 2018 false missile alert, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Red Hill fuel leaks show that local emergency planners can only plan for so many different scenarios.

“To the extent we can prepare, we will. But the challenge right now of what we’re up against, given the enormity and the magnitude and the danger is not something we can easily answer and say we’ve got it handled,” Blangiardi told residents gathered at the Manoa District Park Gymnasium.

It’s estimated that 60% of all communities in Hawaii have just one way in and one way out, Honolulu Department of Emergency Management Hiro Toiya added at that town hall, which presents even more potential challenges when wildfire evacuations are needed.

In Lahaina, scores of people were trapped in traffic gridlock when trying to flee the fire. In an interview last week, Toiya said that Oahu’s county emergency personnel have been discussing how to handle evacuations under different scenarios.

Those post-Lahaina discussions involve efforts to get more advance warning to the public so that the first time the public hears from the county officials they’re not being told to immediately evacuate, he said.

Following last year’s Maui fires, Honolulu fire officials did a lot of community outreach promoting defensible spaces, or maintenance to keep the perimeters around a home free of leaves and other fire fuels, Hao said. 

This week, HWMO launched an online symposium, organized with county fire departments, to educate large landowners across the state on the best practices to manage the dry grasses and vegetation that fuel wildland blazes. 

Those abundant, dry grasses, paired with wind gusts fueled by a hurricane passing hundreds of miles to the south, enabled the Aug. 8 wildfires on Maui to tear through Lahaina at ferocious speeds.

Prior to Aug. 8, HWMO mostly worked with fire crews “and communities who’ve been scared in the past because fire has come close, and that was it. It was the choir trying to support the choir,” Pickett said. 

“Now, it’s everyone actually on board trying to figure out what their roles are and taking steps. This general commitment and awareness is so encouraging, and we’ve long needed it.”

‘What’s The Most We Can Do?’

Maui County officials, including the county’s fire personnel, declined to be interviewed last week regarding any immediate steps they might be taking to address the elevated wildfire threat in the next few months. 

However, in an after-action report released last month on the Aug. 8 fires, the Maui Fire Department recommended pre-positioning fire-fighting equipment in high-risk areas during red flag warnings. That’s similar to the protocols enacted this season by Oahu and Kauai’s fire departments.

Hawaii County’s fire and emergency management chiefs did not respond last week to requests for comment.

Hawaiian Electric Co. faced widespread criticism in the aftermath of the fires that destroyed most of Lahaina and devastated parts of upcountry Maui for not already having a “power safety shutoff plan” in place, similar to utility companies in other fire-prone states.

Now, the company expects to have that plan ready by July 1, although officials stress it would only be used as a last resort.

The Western states that have those shutoff plans also have much more advanced weather forecast capabilities than Hawaii does, according to HECO spokesperson Darren Pai. Those states can use those tools to hone in and get a much clearer idea of the real-time conditions on the ground.

“In Hawaii we’re just getting started with that. But we’re putting those things in place and it’s about taking these steps to ensure that we can keep the public safe,” Pai said.

Hawaii’s state emergency leaders say they’re working with the National Weather Service to refine those capabilities so that during a red-flag warning they can better isolate the areas threatened by wildfire.

The state aims to use that data to more strategically deploy weather stations and sensors and keep track of real-time conditions in the most critical areas, said James Barros, Hawaii Emergency Management Agency administrator. Barros did not have an estimate on when that work might be done.

KIUC, meanwhile, already conducted a power safety shutoff last September in Kokee during a red-flag warning, according to utility spokesperson Beth Amaro.

Both utilities also have new post-Lahaina protocols to trip and shut down circuits along their transmission lines more quickly during wildfire conditions.

On Oahu, Honolulu emergency officials will also consider using the island’s all-hazard sirens in “dynamic” emergencies, such as a wildfire, in conjunction with wireless alerts that give the public more details, Toiya said. 

However, that’s not a direct result of last year’s fires on Maui, when the county’s emergency officials notoriously opted not to use the sirens, believing the public would assume they faced a tsunami and not a fire.

Instead, it’s been the policy on Oahu to consider using the sirens ever since heavy rains prompted flooding and evacuations in Haleiwa in 2020, Toiya said. Following that event, North Shore residents asked why the county didn’t use the sirens, he added. 

Before Lahaina, HFD would initially respond to a wildfire report with one fire engine. Now, the protocol is to send two engines and a tanker out to better ensure the fire doesn’t get out of control, Hao said.

On both Oahu and Kauai, the fire departments will look to deploy more fire crews on those islands’ arid, western sides during wildfire conditions. Kauai Fire Chief Michael Gibson called this policy of so-called “severity staffing” a direct result of what they saw occur on Maui last year.

In the short term, “What’s the most we can do? We know we can’t build a new station.” Beefing up the stations in dry areas during red flag warnings is an optimal way to get additional staff in quickly, he said.

The Kauai Fire Department is also asking for two additional water tankers in the county’s fiscal year 2025 budget, Gibson said. Currently, the department only has one for the entire island and has to draw from tankers from other agencies and private owners in an emergency. The county’s public works department also aims to get excavators, loaders and bulldozers to help clear fire fuel and create fire breaks, he said.

As the new season begins, more people are taking the wildfire threat seriously, Pickett said. Before Lahaina, HWMO would have to convince many locals that the fire risk in Hawaii was high.

“Now we don’t have to say that anymore,” Pickett said. “We’re already past hoping people care to assisting people in taking action and getting ready, which is all we ever really wanted. That elevated level of awareness is going to keep people safer in the long run.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of climate change is supported by the Environmental Funders Group of the Hawaii Community Foundation, Marisla Fund of the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.