Currently — August 10, 2023: Hurricane-driven fires destroy homes and heritage on Maui

The weather, currently.

A wind-driven firestorm on the island of Maui has become one of the worst natural disasters in Hawaii’s history, with 60-80mph wind gusts pushing fires through the town of Lahaina in just a few hours.

The fires knocked out power, 911 service, and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses. The fires also burned the docks and transit terminals in Lahaina — cutting off the island of Lanai from passenger and supply ferries to Maui.

“This is an unprecedented disaster” said Acting Hawaii Governor Sylvia Luke. Luke has ordered a statewide state of emergency, and has discouraged non-essential air travel to Maui, diverting all affected state agencies to assist with the evacuation, search and rescue.

Burn patients were airlifted to hospitals on other islands, and several people have died from their injuries. Some survivors were forced to flee the flames into the ocean. Eyewitnesses to the blaze describe apocalyptic and chaotic scenes that completely overwhelmed firefighting services and first responders.

The very strong and extremely dry downsloping windstorm was worsened by the close passage of Category 4 Hurricane Dora to the south of Hawaii.

Several other fires are also burning across Maui and also on the Big Island right now, but the severity of the wind-driven flames should ease as Hurricane Dora moves further to the west.

Hurricane Dora on its own is a meteorological outlier. After passing over record-warm waters of the Central Pacific, Dora is the longest-lasting Category 4 hurricane in the more than 50 years of comprehensive recordkeeping of the Pacific Ocean.

Since records begin in 1950, there have been just 13 major hurricanes passing near or south of Hawaii like Hurricane Dora. The Central Pacific is one of the few places in the world where the data are clear that climate change, including warming waters, is already making hurricanes stronger and more common.

—Eric Holthaus

What you can do, currently.

The fires in Maui have struck at the heart of Hawaiian heritage, and if you’d like to support survivors, that’s a good place to start.

The fires burned through the capital town of the Kingdom of Hawaii, the ancestral and present home to native Hawaiians on their original unceded lands. One of the buildings destroyed was the Na ‘Aikane o Maui cultural center, a gathering place for the Hawaiian community to organize and celebrate.

If you’d like to help the community rebuild and restore the cultural center, a fund has been established that is accepting donations — specify “donation for Na ‘Aikane” on this Venmo link.