Hawaii Is Entering A Dangerous Fire Season. Here’s What Will Be Different Post-Lahaina聽
Fire and emergency personnel are putting new protocols in place for responding to wildfires, but are also warning that people need to be better prepared, too.
As Hawaii enters its first wildfire season since the deadly Aug. 8 fires in Lahaina, emergency responders and state officials say they鈥檙e 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鈥檒l 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鈥 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鈥檚 too dry and gusty 鈥 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鈥檛 think in my entire career I thought that we would have this elevated commitment across the board” to curb local wildfire risks, nonprofit 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鈥檚 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.
鈥淲hat we learned on Maui is educating the community about what they can do,鈥 Honolulu Fire Department Chief said. 鈥淵ou cannot just look at government. We鈥檙e asking the community to help themselves.鈥
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.
鈥淚t’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,鈥 Todd said at a 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.
鈥淭o the extent we can prepare, we will. But the challenge right now of what we鈥檙e up against, given the enormity and the magnitude and the danger is not something we can easily answer and say we鈥檝e got it handled,” 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 Director 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鈥檙e not being told to immediately evacuate, he said.
Following last year鈥檚 Maui fires, Honolulu fire officials did a lot of community outreach promoting , 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 鈥渁nd communities who鈥檝e been scared in the past because fire has come close, and that was it. It was the choir trying to support the choir,鈥 Pickett said.
鈥淣ow, it鈥檚 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鈥檝e long needed it.鈥
‘What’s The Most We Can Do?’
Maui County officials, including the county鈥檚 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 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鈥檚 similar to the protocols enacted this season by Oahu and Kauai鈥檚 fire departments.
Hawaii County鈥檚 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 鈥減ower safety shutoff plan鈥 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.
鈥淚n Hawaii we鈥檙e just getting started with that. But we鈥檙e putting those things in place and it鈥檚 about taking these steps to ensure that we can keep the public safe,” Pai said.
Hawaii’s state emergency leaders say they鈥檙e 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.
As the new season begins, more people are taking the wildfire threat seriously.
On Oahu, Honolulu emergency officials will also consider using the island鈥檚 all-hazard sirens in 鈥渄ynamic鈥 emergencies, such as a wildfire, in conjunction with wireless alerts that give the public more details, Toiya said.
However, that鈥檚 not a direct result of last year鈥檚 fires on Maui, when the county鈥檚 emergency officials notoriously opted not to use the sirens, believing the public would assume they faced a tsunami and not a fire.
Instead, it鈥檚 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鈥檛 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鈥檚 the most we can do? We know we can鈥檛 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鈥檛 have to say that anymore,” Pickett said. “We鈥檙e 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.鈥
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.
