Thousands of Hawaii residents raced to escape homes on Maui as blazes swept across the island, destroying parts of a centuries-old town and killing at least 36 people in one of the deadliest U.S. wildfires in recent years.
The fire took the island by surprise, leaving behind burned-out cars on once busy streets and smoking piles of rubble where historic buildings had stood in Lahaina Town, which dates to the 1700s and has long been a favorite destination of tourists. Crews battled blazes in several places on the island Wednesday, and the flames forced some adults and children to flee into the ocean.
At least 36 people have died, according to a statement from Maui County late Wednesday that said no other details were available. Officials said earlier that 271 structures were damaged or destroyed and dozens of people injured. The 2018 Camp Fire in California killed at least 85 people and virtually razed the town of Paradise.
What we’re seeing in #Maui is a “compound” climate catastrophe, where an immediate factor (in this case, unusually strong winds from the outer bands of a passing hurricane) interact w/ background state (extreme drought that has been in place for a month)
#MauiFires were fueled by an underlying drought and gusty winds caused by the pressure difference between major hurricane #Dora passing 100s of miles to the south and a strong Pacific high to the north. @WFLApic.twitter.com/RD8AqDHxNy
So much has been destroyed by the fire on Maui. Lives. But also the Banyan Tree- it was over 150 years old & had a mystical importance for the Hawaiian people pic.twitter.com/B91QbM9f0J
They’re starting to call it the Pyrocene – the age of Fire.
Above, remembering 2021’s Marshall Fire, in Boulder County, Colorado, in which high winds combined with extraordinary dry conditions to blowtorch thousands of buildings.
Lytton Canada, a city in the glacial valleys of British Columbia, while reaching record temperatures of 121°F, breaking old records by a mind-blowing 17 degrees, simply burst into flames and was razed in 2021.
Santa Rosa California, after the Tubbs Fire in 2017
In 2017, the Tubbs Fire charred 5000 buildings in Santa Rosa California.
Now, Lahaina, in Maui, erased by wind driven fires after drought.
Tim Scott on Fox & Friends downplays the threat of climate change, saying, "this is ridiculous to talk about climate emergency when we have a border emergency right now." pic.twitter.com/TKHrk99NL8
This is what it looked like earlier on Maui. If you've been to my hometown of Lahaina…I fear it is no longer. I dread what it will look like in the morning. An apocalyptic scene is unfolding due to the fires raging across my island. Please pray for us. pic.twitter.com/88V2kjjpyV
— HawaiiDelilah™ 🟦 #MauiStrong 🇺🇸🇺🇦✡️ (@HawaiiDelilah) August 9, 2023
Extremely dangerous wildfire situation is ongoing in West Maui as strong winds up to 60 mph are pushing flames toward populated areas in and around Lahaina. pic.twitter.com/YxRvQp7AxI
Her’s some good beach reading – New York Times thought piece triggered climate deniers this week when it simply asked a good question – where can you go for a break now without worrying about some horrible climate amped extreme event making it miserable?
The answer at this moment, as I write, would be, Michigan, where it’s sunny, 74 degrees, with just enough humidity to soften the gentle breeze coming in the window. Key indicator – Air Quality Index is a relatively low 54, so that’s nice also – considering the choking smoke we have had for several periods earlier in the summer, and which could come back with a shift in winds. Impossible to convey the gut punch images like this have been.
Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge connects the lower and upper peninsulas, and is considered “Gateway to God’s Country” by locals. It was shrouded in choking wildfire smoke for several periods earlier this summer.
We’ve had a lot of images this season from holiday havens that have been more hellish than heavenly. I didn’t have to search hard to find the video above of Greek wildfires triggering an explosion at an Ammo dump.
You can’t escape the orange. That’s what travelers this summer have been reckoning with — swaths of tangerine, traffic cone and burnt sienna on maps indicating record high temperatures around the globe. Four concurrent heat domes from the southern United States to East Asia descended on millions — Phoenix residents enduring 31 days of 110-degree-plus temperatures. Italians in more than a dozen cities under extreme weather warnings. And in South Korea, at least 125 people were hospitalized for heat-related conditions at the World Scout Jamboree.
In Florida, it got so bad in June that Jacki Barber, 50, a clinical social worker and eighth-generation Floridian, canceled a beach trip to St. Augustine. “The water temperature was like 89 degrees,” Ms. Barber said.
“We’re used to hurricanes ruining plans, tropical storms, even just bad thunderstorms,” she said. “But I don’t recall ever looking at anyone and saying ‘It’s too hot to go to the beach.’”
As the summer travel engine kicked into high gear this year, it wasn’t just the scorching heat affecting carefully laid plans. There were also fires, floods, tornadoes and hail storms. Eight inches of rainfall left parts of Vermont coping with catastrophic floods. Tens of thousands of people, including thousands of tourists, had to evacuate islands in Greece because of wildfires. (Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday offered a free weeklong stay in 2024 to those travelers affected — in spring or fall.) The popular music festival Awakenings canceled a date in the Netherlands because of concern over hail, lightning and thunderstorms.
Below, Climate Denier mainstay Marc Morano, claims on Fox News that the Times piece was part of a “Climate Science Psyop” on the American people, and worried about his “freedom of movement”. (Marc, if that’s a problem I suggest Psyllium.)
It’s winter in the Southern Hemisphere, when ice typically forms around Antarctica. But this year, that growth has been stunted, hitting a record low by a wide margin.
The sharp drop in sea ice is alarming scientists and raising concerns about its vital role in regulating ocean and air temperatures, circulating ocean water and maintaining an ecosystem crucial for everything from microscopic plankton to the continent’s iconic penguins.
“This year is really different,” said Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder and an Antarctica expert at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. “It’s a very sudden change.”
A continued decline in Antarctic sea ice would have global consequences by exposing more of the continent’s ice sheet to the open ocean, allowing it to melt and break off more easily, contributing to rising sea levels that affect coastal populations around the world.
Less ice also means less protection from solar rays, which can raise the water temperature, making it harder for ice to form.
At the end of June, ice covered 4.5 million square miles, or 11.7 million square kilometers, of ocean around the continent, according to NSIDC data. That’s nearly a million square miles less than the expected average from approximately 40 years of satellite observations.
The clear departure from previous years is startling, since sea ice around Antarctica has been slower to respond to climate change than ice in the Arctic Ocean.
