The Hawaii attorney general’s new report on Lahaina’s tragic August fire goes into the minute details of the fire and the official response as Maui’s outstanding firefighters battled the blaze.

The report was actually a minute-by-minute account of almost what each person working for Maui Fire Department was doing. That’s good, because the state is paying more than a million dollars for the first portion of the account, with the expectation that there will be a similar bill for the next year of the report.

One of the researchers hired for the report said the fire has lessons for everyone.

“The Lahaina wildfire tragedy serves as a sobering reminder that the threat of grassland fires, wildfires and wildfire-initiated urban conflagrations, fueled by climate change and urban encroachment into wildland areas, is a reality that must be addressed with the utmost urgency and diligence — not just in Hawaii,” said Steve Kerber, Ph.D., P.E., vice president and executive director of the Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI).

According to reports in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser after the review was made public, both AG Anne Lopez and Gov. Josh Green were staggered by the immense destruction, dubbed “a mega fire” and its cause.

“A few days after the wildfire I was speaking with the governor, and he and I were asking the same questions that everybody else was, which is, ‘How could something like this have ever happened?’” Lopez said.

The Washington Post reported last week: “The chaos put police and firefighters in extremely dangerous situations. At least seven firetrucks were damaged, burned, or rendered immobile by tangled power lines, with firefighters incurring injuries, sprinting to save residents by carrying them on their backs, and having to try to rescue their own who were trapped in extremely hot, stranded engines.”

The New York Times said: “The report described heroic efforts by firefighters, some of whom used their own vehicles, or carried victims on their backs while trying to overcome extreme winds, blocked evacuation routes and a water system that was collapsing.”

One report from the field detailed the dangers, saying, ”The attack plan was to spread units with apparatus staged … to contain the spread, but the wind was causing the fire to move too fast and there was not water supply … crew reports there were softball and basketball size embers causing structures to ignite, and the fire was then spreading.”

Another report said a ladder crew saw another Maui fire crew “placing a family of seven including a baby in their cab. An operator provided an oxygen non-rebreather mask for the baby. The crew recalled roofs catching on fire and fire from structures extended to unoccupied parked vehicles.”

Repeatedly, the FSRI report says the fire’s fury was more than the fire department was prepared for. High winds may have caused the catastrophe to get out of hand, but they were both predicted and the subject of fire alerts broadcast by the weather service.

This fire may have been fierce, but it was not an unimagined blaze. There actually had been a smaller but similar blaze in the same area in the past.

The fire itself, however, was unprepared for — and that is the question that both the state government and Maui County must explain and be held responsible for.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.