How the Maui Wildfires Became So Destructive, So Fast
Fire researcher Mojtaba Sadegh says the power of heat, flames and embers moving through grass and buildings is “terrible.”
At least 55 people are dead and hundreds of homes incinerated after tail winds from a hurricane stoked wildfires on Maui. Much of Lahaina, once the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, was destroyed, with residents fleeing and some taking temporary refuge in the sea.
Scientists may spend months or even years trying to understand what caused the fires. Whatever gave off the initial spark — be it a broken power line, campfire or something else — occurred amid a drought, which seared a landscape of invasive grass covering many thousands of acres. The grass lit up just as powerful winds from a high-pressure zone to the north swept downwards toward Hurricane Dora, a low-pressure zone far off to the south.