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Brush fires took their toll on Maui in 2019, setting ablaze more acres of land last year than in recent years, and in the process destroyed utility poles, amassed hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs by the county and displaced hundreds of people.
About 25,000 acres were burned in 2019, Maui’s Department of Fire and Public Safety reported, which was more than six times what was burned in 2018.
“It is very safe to say that we have had a very active fire season this year,” Rylan Yatsushiro, fire services chief of the department, said in a written statement.
Yatsushiro reported that
3,900 acres were burned in 2018, 14,000 in 2016, 8,000 in 2010 and 1,300 in 2005.
He said that since July 1, the start of the fiscal year, over $600,000 was spent by the department to deal with the various fires.
Yatsushiro reported $103,844 being spent in overtime for
MFD personnel, $186,860 in
helicopter use and $339,160 in heavy-equipment use.
The Maui Police Department
reported an additional $30,000 in expenses in response to the fires.
The biggest fires of the year took place during the summer or fall: 9,200 acres of land were burned in Central Maui and northern Kihei in July, 5,300 acres were burned near Pukalani in August and another 4,100 acres were burned in Maalaea in October.
He said there were no major structural losses aside from a “large number of utility poles owned by (Maui Electric Co.).”
MECO spokeswoman Shayna Decker said the July fire affected 4,000 customers while damaging the transmission line from Maalaea to Kihei. She said damage estimates for MECO were $500,000 for that fire, while the Pukalani fire caused $1 million in damage and affected the Kanaha-to-Pukalani transmission line.
The Red Cross sheltered hundreds of people during the fires in 2019. Maria Lutz, regional disaster officer for American Red Cross
Pacific Islands Region, reported that the organization temporarily sheltered over 600 people during the July fire and 95 people during the fire in October.
She said the Red Cross responded to five brush fires in
Maui throughout the year.
Most of the brush fires took place in Central Maui, home to thousands of acres of former sugar lands. Yatsushiro called the vegetation in dry sugar lands “fuel” that contributed to the fires and said that the “dry, windy, and hot conditions encountered compounded the problem.”
“This year has definitely been one of the most active ones for MFD,” said Fire Chief David Thyne in a statement. “Record breaking heat along with the dry and windy conditions were all contributing factors to this active wildfire year.”
It was an unusually hot year for the state as a whole, with 272 days of the year experiencing high temperatures that tied or broke previous records for their respective days.
Maui twice recorded Hawaii’s highest 2019 temperature — 97 degrees Fahrenheit — and tied or broke daily high temperatures every month of the year aside from February and March.
On Maui nearly 40% of the population resides in a valley between West Maui Mountains and Haleakala Volcano, where heat is trapped by cooler air from above.
“We would like to ask the public to remain very cautious when dealing with any potential fire hazard,” Thyne said. “The brush areas around the island remain very dry and vulnerable. We would also like to remind residents to maintain a defensible space around their homes to help protect their property in the event of a wildfire.”
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