Hawaii wildfires raze resort city on Maui island, killing dozens

By Marco Garcia

KAHULUI, Hawaii (Reuters) - A wildfire that swept through the resort town of Lahaina on Hawaii's Maui island has killed at least 36 people, authorities said, leaving behind smoldering ruins and forcing thousands to flee the onetime capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Video footage showed neighborhoods and businesses razed and vehicles burned to a crisp across the western side of the U.S. island as the wildfires cut off most roads out of Lahaina. The town is one of Maui's prime attractions, drawing 2 million tourists to the island each year, or about 80 percent of its visitors.

The wildfires, which began Tuesday night, took most of Lahaina's residents and visitors by surprise, forcing some to run for their lives and jump into the ocean to escape the fast-moving inferno.

Kai Watanabe, a Japan native who is entering his second year at Penn State University, was at a hotel north of Lahaina with his family when the power cut out on Tuesday. They left to buy flashlights and supplies, but when they tried to return, the road was closed due to the fires.

At first, Watanabe, 19, didn't realize the otherworldly orange glow in the distance was a fire.

"It looked like an ocean on fire throughout the horizon," he said by phone on Thursday from a shelter set up at the War Memorial Complex, which he and his family reached after sleeping in their car for a night.

Watanabe was among the more than 2,100 people being housed at the island's four emergency shelters, Hawaii News Now said.

At least 20 people suffered serious burns, and several were airlifted to Oahu for medical treatment, while more than 11,000 visitors were evacuated from Maui, Ed Sniffen of the Hawaii Department of Transportation said late on Wednesday.

Though at least 16 roads were closed, the airport was operating fully, he said.

Most of the roughly 400 evacuees at the War Memorial shelter on Thursday morning had arrived in shock, with an "empty look," said Dr. Gerald Tariao Montano, a pediatrician who volunteered to work a six-hour shift on Wednesday night.

"Some haven't fully grasped that they lost everything," he said in an interview. He pleaded for donations of clothes, supplies, food, baby formula and diapers. "We need everything and fast."

Governor Josh Green said Hawaii had not seen such widespread disaster and death since 1960, one year after it became a U.S. state, when a tsunami killed 61 people.

The fire burned cultural treasures such as Lahaina's historic 60-foot(18-meter)-tall banyan tree, which marked the spot where Hawaiian King Kamehameha III's 19th-century palace stood, according to local reports.

Some 271 structures were damaged or destroyed, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported, citing official reports from flyovers conducted by the U.S. Civil Air Patrol and the Maui Fire Department.

A restaurant on Lahaina's Front Street owned by Mick Fleetwood, the drummer for rock band Fleetwood Mac, was devoured by the flames, according to unconfirmed reports. A post on its Instagram account said the proprietors did "not have enough information" about the restaurant's condition.

"We will need to rebuild the entirety of Lahaina, I believe," Green said in an interview with KHON 2, a local Fox affiliate.

Wiping away tears, he said he expected the next few days to be "incredibly traumatizing" as firefighters discovered more victims. Green planned to tour the devastated area on Thursday morning.

President Joe Biden on Thursday approved a disaster declaration for Hawaii, allowing affected individuals and business owners to apply for federal housing and economic recovery grants, the White House said in a statement.

In a call with Green, Biden mourned the lives lost and vast destruction of land and property, the White House said.

The specific cause of the Maui wildfires has yet to be determined, officials said, but the National Weather Service said dry vegetation, strong winds, and low humidity fueled the fast-moving conflagration.

Wildfires occur every year in Hawaii, according to Thomas Smith, an environmental geography professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, but this year's fires are burning faster and bigger than usual.

THREE SEPARATE BLAZES

Firefighters were battling three separate blazes on the island, officials said late on Wednesday night, without providing details. Fires also destroyed parts of Kula, a residential area in the inland Upcountry region, and Kihei in South Maui.

Scenes of fiery devastation have become all too familiar elsewhere in the world this summer. Wildfires, often caused by record-setting heat, forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people in Greece, Spain, Portugal and other parts of Europe. In western Canada, a series of unusually severe fires sent clouds of smoke over vast swaths of the U.S., polluting the air.

Human-caused climate change, driven by fossil fuel use, is increasing the frequency and intensity of such extreme weather events, scientists say, having long warned that countries must slash emissions to prevent climate catastrophe.

The Maui blazes began on Tuesday night as powerful winds from Hurricane Dora, hundreds of miles to the southwest, fanned the flames. By Thursday, the strong winds had largely abated.

As of early Thursday, the tracking site Poweroutage.us reported about 11,000 homes and businesses were without power on Maui, which has a year-round population of 165,000.

(Additional reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta and Brendan O'Brien in Chicago; Editing by Frank McGurty, Angus MacSwan, Alex Richardson, Jonathan Oatis and Sandra Maler)

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