LAHAINA, Hawaii — The hills above Lahaina’s historic downtown have been surrounded by nonnative grasses for more than a century.
The grasses — relics of the sugar cane plantations in the area that largely shuttered in 1999 — dried out the landscape. They grew taller after winter rains. Brushfires would sweep through and the species adapted and regrew, crowding out native grasses and moving close to homes. Locals who live surrounded by these fields say they rarely saw anyone come to manage the vegetation.
[Why Hawaii’s wildfires are so devastating — and ‘predictable’]
Then on Aug. 8, power lines fell near one of these flammable fields, whipping fire down the hills, in a sequence of events that would lead to one of the deadliest wildfiresin U.S. history.
Story continues below advertisement
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Advertisement
A Washington Post investigation found that the inferno that burned Lahaina town to the ground began on a fallow, unmanaged plot of land on a hill north of downtown, and the geographic spread and density of the nonnative grasses were key elements to creating a fast-moving, uncontrollable fire.
The comprehensive retracing is based on a review of topographic maps, satellite imagery, videos recorded by eyewitnesses and tax parcel data, as well as interviews with area residents and experts in fire, ecology and botany. It shows how powerful winds blowing in a southwesterly direction pushed the flames down hills through massive fields of overgrown vegetation — feeding a fire that would consume propane tanks, melt steel and kill at least 115 people, though the toll is expected to rise.
The Post’s investigation reveals that despite years of repeated warnings of fire risk, weak code enforcement and a lack of government resources have hampered meaningful action to manage the grasses.
Story continues below advertisement
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Advertisement
The fields where the fires started and spread are primarily owned by three parties: Kamehameha Schools, also known as the Bishop Estate, an educational trust that is one of the state’s largest private land owners; the state of Hawaii; and Peter Martin, a prominent local developer.
While grasses aren’t the only factor — other elements have been the subject of lawsuits, including emergency preparedness, the electrical grid and water scarcity — the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources said in an email to The Post that West Maui is at a high risk for wildfire because of invasive grasses, many of which “lack active management.”
“The town was basically surrounded by a powder keg waiting to go off with a spark,” said David Bowman, a professor of pyrogeography and fire science at the University of Tasmania.
What happened on Maui could be repeated across the Hawaiian islands, where much of the land has similarly large, fallow fields of nonnative grasses.
Lahaina Fire origin
maui fire map
maui fire map
The fire began on the hills above downtown Lahaina around sunrise on Aug. 8. Evidence suggests heavy winds downed power lines in the area, sending sparks into the dry shrubland. Hawaiian Electric said this “appears” to have been the cause of the fire that morning.
Videos captured at 6:40 a.m. show snapped lines dangling from electric poles near the initial fire. Strong winds pushed the flames in a southwesterly direction.
By 9 a.m., Maui County announced the brush fire was 100 percent contained. It later said that means the fire was not extinguished but surrounded by a perimeter to stop its spread.
The fire started on properties largely covered in nonnative grasslands and shrubs, as confirmed by 2020 vegetation data published by the Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the Department of Interior.
Jacob Bendix, professor emeritus of geography at Syracuse University, said the grasses provided “fine fuels that ignite easily” due to their high surface area-to-volume ratio, dense growth patterns and height.
Experts said the grasses looked very dry and abundant. Carla D’Antonio, a professor of plant ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, called them “ready to burn.”
Video filmed at 2:56 p.m. captured the fire resurging in the grasslands, a few hundred feet from where the initial fire started. Increasing temperatures over the course of the morning and into the afternoon, as well as decreasing humidity, would have sapped the moisture from the grasses, said Mark Thorne, a professor of rangeland ecology at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. These conditions would have allowed any smolders from the morning to spark again, igniting the now dryer, unburned fuel.
According to videos and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sensors, wind blew in a southwesterly direction throughout the afternoon and into the evening, blowing smoke and fire from higher elevation toward Lahaina’s downtown.
The downward trajectory in elevation increased atmospheric pressure on the air, heating it up and dropping its relative humidity — meaning that the winds were not only pushing the fire along, but they were “also preheating and drying any potential fuels,” Bendix said.
Two videos taken 30 minutes apart reveal how quickly the fire spread southward. The Maui County Fire Department told The Post it initially had the afternoon fire in check but the wind carried embers from the fire into town.
Scorched ground in satellite imagery shows the grasslands clearly burned and provided fuel for ignition and rapid downslope spread, D’Antonio said.
Buildings directly north and northwest of the initial fire — out of the wind’s path — had less visible damage, whereas those to the west and southwest were destroyed.
Once the fire reached town, the embers jumped from home to home, quickly outpacing firefighters. Homes in Lahaina — many made of “old and flammable materials and built prior to modern fire codes,” according to the Maui Fire Department — stood no chance.
The risk of nonnative unmanaged grasslands is no secret. Activists and experts have been vocalizing their concerns for years. After a 2,100-acre fire in the Lahaina area in 2018, a fire-prevention community organizer referred to the landscape as a “vast swath of vegetated fuels” during a public meeting. An activist said landowners “let these lands turn into match sticks.” Hawaii wildfire experts have repeatedly singled out better management of nonnative grasses as key to mitigating fire risk.
“I’m feeling really frustrated because I see people saying, well, we didn’t have any idea this could happen in Hawaii,” said Thorne, who sits on the board of the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization. “We all know that fire is going to happen. We’re not taking enough steps to reduce the hazard for these communities.”
Lahaina land ownership
Ownership of burnt nonnative grassland in Lahaina
State of Hawaii
Kamehameha Schools
Peter Martin & Associates
Perimeter of burnt ground
‘Au‘au channel
Source: Maui County
THE WASHINGTON POST
Ownership of burnt nonnative grassland in Lahaina
State of Hawaii
Kamehameha Schools
Peter Martin & Associates
Perimeter of burnt ground
‘Au‘au channel
Source: Maui County
THE WASHINGTON POST
Developer Peter Martin, who was reached by phone, told The Post that the invasive grass was a “red herring” to divert attention from the government’s water resource regulations, which he said were so restrictive that they prevented farming or development of the land he owns. “The truth is that I believe that God was angry,” Martin said, that these lands were not being used “as God intended.”
In a written response to The Post, Kamehameha Schools defended its stewardship of the lands, citing firebreaks that it put in before the recent fire and its efforts to bring water to the fields to make the lands “productive.”
Story continues below advertisement
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Advertisement
“We have managed our lands in an effort to heal the ʻāina (land) and create a thriving resource for our lāhui (community),” said Sterling Wong, a spokesperson for the Kamehameha Schools.
The state’s Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) told The Post it has tried to mitigate fire risk with limited resources, including applying for federal grants to create fire breaks and reduce invasive species across state and private lands in West Maui.
The DLNR shared a map of fire break networks the department maintained before the West Maui fire. These strips of land where vegetation has been cut to stop the spread of fire are just 300 feet east of where the fire began.
A 2014 study conducted by the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization (HWMO) on wildfire hazards around West Maui designated Lahaina as being at “extreme” risk. A decade later, HWMO’s co-executive director, Elizabeth Pickett, said the nonprofit has implemented many of the study’s community-level proposals such as fire safety education and wildfire-preparedness campaigns.
But what’s really necessary to keep communities safe, Pickett said, is action from large private landowners and elected officials. Neither party has meaningfully engaged with HWMO’s proposals, she said, including large-scale investments in brush abatement programs and putting resources toward enforcing fire codes.
Story continues below advertisement
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Advertisement
“We have realized that [large land owners] have priorities other than public safety,” Pickett told The Post. “That’s why we need government enforcement of vegetation management.”
Gov. Josh Green admitted the government’s failure to prioritize fire protection of the land in a January memorandum to the state legislature, citing minimal resources. “The economic benefits of invasive species reduction and watershed protection have been repeatedly proven by studies to outweigh the costs,” the memo said. But “current budget levels limited the ... ability to fight fire and respond to other emergencies.”
Maui County’s fire code states that flammable vegetation and combustible materials must be cleared from within 30 feet of structures.
But ensuring that landowners are complying with fire codes primarily is the responsibility of county fire departments, which often lack the capacity, resources and funds to inspect and manage flammable vegetation to the degree required given the level of risk, Pickett said.
Bridget G. Morgan-Bickerton, a Honolulu-based attorney specializing in nuisance law and representing clients suing a large landowner on the island of Hawaii after a massive fire there, argued that landowners have an obligation under nuisance law to cut grasses that could be a fire risk.
Story continues below advertisement
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Advertisement
She anticipates vegetation management “will be a huge part of litigation that will probably go on for many years” after this most recent fire.
Longtime residents in the neighborhood directly northwest of the field where the fire began said it’s been dry for years. Thomas Maielua, who has lived there for most of his life, said he never saw anyone taking care of the field and he doesn’t know who owns it. “It’s been going on for us for a while,” he said. “It’s the third fire already,” he said, pointing out the scorch marks in the hills above after another fire in November 2022.
Theresa Marzan, who has lived in the neighborhood for about 12 years, said she sometimes would see a couple men from Lahaina town cutting the grass on their own and hauling it away. “But that’s just one person,” she said
“I think we were just accustomed to it because Lahaina is so dry all the time anyways,” she said.
WUI map Hawaii
Wildland-urban interface and intermix in Hawaii
Areas of wildland-urban interface and intermix
Moloka‘i
Source: David Helmers, SILVIS Lab, UW-Madison
Wildland-urban interface and intermix in Hawaii
Areas of wildland-urban interface and intermix
Moloka‘i
Haiku-Pauwela
Source: David Helmers, SILVIS Lab, UW-Madison
THE WASHINGTON POST
Wildland-urban interface and intermix in Hawaii
Areas of wildland-urban interface and intermix
Moloka‘i
Haiku-Pauwela
Lahaina sits in an area of Maui where developed land abuts or mingles with vegetation — some native, some introduced — from wildlands. These areas, dubbed a “wildland urban interface” or WUI, are at higher risk for wildfires, according to fire experts.
This dynamic is not unique to Maui, but also exists throughout the rest of Hawaii. Ninety-four percent of all buildings across the state sit in such zones, according to a mapping analysis by the University of Wisconsin’s Silvis Lab.
“There are just so many communities and houses in similar settings that sooner or later similar conditions will arise again,” said Volker Radeloff, a professor at the University of Wisconsin. “Getting ready for that day will have to start now.”
correction
A previous version of this article used incorrect wording to describe the direction of the winds. The winds were blowing in a southwesterly direction. The article has been corrected.
Satellite imagery for this story was provided by Planet Labs and nonnative grassland data provided by Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the Department of Interior.
Darryl Fears contributed to this report.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLavwsSsq6Kfkam2sLrSaKCnrJWnrqTAyK%2BcaGpgZ4BwuMChmKKmkWLEqrjDn6CrnaNitq%2FCwKygr51dnL%2Biv9Jmm56rpKfCpMDIqKVo