Hawaii’s “biggest natural disaster in history”: at least 55 people died in devastating fires that almost razed a tourist town in this American state where the toll is expected to rise further.
Local authorities in Maui County reported 55 deaths as of 9 p.m. local time Thursday, (0700 GMT Friday), adding that firefighters were still battling the blaze in the ravaged resort town of Lahaina.
Thousands of residents and tourists have already been evacuated from the disaster areas in the archipelago. The death toll could well exceed 60 victims, said Governor Josh Green, who said that on the island of Maui, Lahaina, former capital of the kingdom of Hawaii in the 19th century, is “80%” destroyed.
The impressive images of an AFP photographer who was able to fly over Lahaina on Thursday show thousands of buildings completely charred by the ocean. Often no walls have survived, their former location is simply covered with a pile of grayish ash.
“This is the biggest natural disaster in the history of the State of Hawaii,” insisted the governor Thursday to the press, estimating that the toll should exceed that of the disaster that occurred a year before Hawaii became the 50th American state.
“In 1960, we had 61 deaths when a huge wave swept over Big Island,” he explained.
These devastating fires come in the middle of a summer marked by a series of extreme weather events, all over the planet.
“It looks like a war zone there,” Brandon Wilson, a tourist who came to celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary with his wife, told AFP as he waited in the airport queue to leave. Maui. “It’s really as if someone had come and bombarded the whole city, everything is completely devastated, completely charred,” he says in tears.
Fueled by strong winds, fed by the force of Hurricane Dora which is currently passing through the Pacific Ocean, the fires spread so quickly that the population was taken aback: a hundred inhabitants threw themselves into the sea ??to escape the flames, according to the coast guard.
President Joe Biden has signed a natural disaster declaration, which will unlock significant federal aid to fund relief, emergency shelter and reconstruction efforts.
But on the spot, the locals count the inanimate bodies and grow impatient.
“We’re trying to save lives and I don’t feel like we’re getting the help we need,” Lahaina resident Kekoa Lansford said.
“We still see dead bodies floating in the water and on the dikes,” he added.
About 100 people jumped into the water to escape the flames, US Coast Guard official Aja Kirksey told CNN.
Thousands of people were evacuated from the disaster areas to emergency centers or Maui’s main airport.
“We are going to need to house thousands of people,” insisted the governor, explaining that the authorities are currently contacting the hotels of the archipelago and appealing to the generosity of the inhabitants capable of housing displaced people in their homes.
Tourists are asked to leave the island, buses are organized to exfiltrate them.
Like Lorraina Peterson, who spent three days stuck in her hotel room as a honeymoon.
Without electricity and internet, “we were completely helpless,” she told AFP at the airport before boarding.
“Even at the hotel they didn’t know what was going on,” she added, saying she was “sad for the people who lost their homes.”
According to the PowerOutage site, around 11,000 homes and businesses remained without electricity Thursday afternoon in the archipelago.
The fires have spread rapidly thanks to “particularly parched” vegetation on Maui, which has seen below-average rainfall this spring and higher-than-usual temperatures, according to Thomas Smith, professor of environmental geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
While it is always difficult to attribute a particular event to climate change, scientists regularly point out that global warming increases the frequency of extreme events. More intense and more numerous, the episodes of drought increase the danger of the fires, which spread more quickly.
Massive fires have ravaged Canada, a record-long heat wave has scoured the southern United States, and heat waves have also hit Europe and parts of Asia.
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08/11/2023 10:23:59 – Kahului (United States) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
