Wildfires, pushed by powerful winds, raced through Lahaina, Hawaii, on Aug. 8 and 9, 2023, leaving a charred and smoldering landscape across the tourist town of about 13,000 residents that was once the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii. At least 55 people died, Maui County officials said. Others were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard after going into the ocean to escape the flames.
Dry grasses and strong winds, influenced by Hurricane Dora passing far to the south, heightened the risk as wildfires burned both in Maui’s tourist-filled west coast and farther inland and on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Most fires in the U.S. are suppressed before they have a chance to threaten communities, but the winds were too strong to send helicopters into the sky to help contain Maui’s fires on the first day, leaving firefighters to battle the blazes from the ground.
Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke issued an emergency declaration, activating the National Guard to help, and urged travelers to stay away.
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[embedded content]Video shared by Maui Now shows the fires and strong winds. [embedded content]Lines of flames move quickly through the hills in Maui the night of Aug. 8, 2023. Video by Clint Hansen.
Fires have become an increasing risk in many areas of the U.S. that people once considered safe.
Over the past two decades, a staggering 21.8 million Americans found themselves living within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of a large wildfire. Nearly 600,000 of them were directly exposed to the fire, with their homes inside the wildfire perimeter. That number—people directly exposed to wildfires—more than doubled from 2000 to 2019, my team’s recent research shows.
But while commentators often blame the rising risk on homebuilders pushing deeper into the wildland areas, we found that the population growth in these high-risk areas explained only a small part of the increase in the number of people who were exposed to wildfires.
Instead, three-quarters of this trend was driven by intense fires growing out of control and encroaching on existing communities.
That knowledge has implications for how communities prepare to fight wildfires in the future, how