More than 80 people died on Saturday August 12, after a rapid and deadly fire struck the island of Maui, in the American archipelago of Hawaii, two days earlier. As the survivors of Lahaina, a community razed by the flames, begin to return to the scene, many are calling for an inquiry.
Hawaii’s chief legal officer said Friday she was opening a probe into the handling of devastating wildfires that killed at least 80 people in the state this week, as criticism grows of the official response.
The announcement and increased death toll came as residents of Lahaina were allowed back into the town for the first time — with most finding their homes reduced to ashes, and even the lucky few angry at a sense of abandonment.
Hawaii’s Attorney General Anne Lopez said her office would examine “critical decision-making and standing policies leading up to, during and after the wildfires on Maui and Hawai’i islands this week.”
She added that her department would make the findings public.
A new manifestation on Global Warming
Late Friday, Maui County officials revised the death toll to 80, adding that 1,418 people were in emergency evacuation shelters.
The fires follow other extreme weather events in North America this summer, with record-breaking wildfires still burning across Canada and a major heat wave baking the US southwest.
Europe and parts of Asia have also endured soaring temperatures, with major fires and floods wreaking havoc. Scientists have said global warming caused by carbon emissions is contributing to the extreme weather.
For some of those who made it back into Lahaina, there was elation as they tearfully reconnected with neighbors they feared might not have gotten out alive.
For some of the luckiest, there was joy — albeit tempered by the scale of the tragedy that counts among the worst natural disasters to hit the state of Hawaii.
But even those few whose homes still appeared habitable were being warned they might not be safe.
Fears of looting were also on residents’ minds.
Trying to take in the enormity of the destruction
County authorities said anyone accessing Lahaina would have to prove they lived or were staying at a hotel there, and that a curfew would be in place between 10 pm and 6 am.
Some of those who made it back to Lahaina wandered in stunned silence trying to take in the enormity of the destruction.
Crews from Honolulu arrived on Maui along with search and rescue teams from the US mainland equipped with five K-9 cadaver dogs, Maui County said.
Firefighters were continuing to extinguish flare-ups and contain wildfires in Lahaina, with spot blazes evident to the AFP team in the town.
Maui County Police Chief John Pelletier said Thursday that as many as 1,000 people could be unaccounted for, though he stressed that this did not mean they were missing or dead.
Malo Pinatel, with AFP
