At least 80 people died in the fires that ravaged the island of Maui, Hawaii, a heavy toll that earned authorities a shower of criticism on Saturday over their handling of one of the worst natural disasters in recent history. the American archipelago.
The residents, still in shock, are just beginning to see the extent of the damage in Lahaina, almost reduced to nothing by the force of the blaze.
“It took everything, everything! It breaks my heart,” laments Anthony Garcia, 80, who made the city his home some 30 years ago. Around, the survivors stir the ashes in the hope of finding photos or objects.
Of the shops, hotels, buildings and restaurants that made the charm of this seaside town of 13,000 inhabitants, there is almost nothing left. A majestic banyan tree, a tourist attraction, was licked by the flames but appears to have survived. It stands, now solitary amidst the ruins.
During this nightmare, the locals could only count on the “coconut network” – word of mouth – denounced to AFP a resident, William Harry.
In this landscape of desolation, the residents seek to understand how the drama could take on such proportions. Justice too: an investigation has been opened into the management of the crisis by the authorities.
Maui suffered numerous power outages during the crisis, and the 911 emergency number stopped working in parts of the island, while fire alarm sirens were not activated.
The alerts, usually transmitted by telephone, could not be received because “there was no network” and “clearly, we did not provide backup solutions to ensure the safety of the inhabitants”, admitted Saturday Jill Tokuda, elected Democrat of Hawaii, on the CNN channel.
“We underestimated the dangerousness and the speed of the fire,” she regretted. “We have to improve.”
With 80 deaths, the toll of these fires, which started earlier this week, exceeds that of the 1960 tsunami, which killed 61 on the island of Hawaii.
And the archipelago has probably not finished counting its dead. Search and rescue teams, accompanied by dogs, arrived in Maui to search for possible bodies, according to the county.
Some 2,207 buildings, mostly residential, were destroyed or damaged, according to the federal agency responsible for responding to natural disasters (Fema).
For the Lahaina fire alone, the cost of reconstruction is estimated at $5.52 billion.
The fire was “incredibly devastating”, according to Jeremy Greenberg, a Fema official interviewed on MSNBC. “These types of fires can spread a distance the equivalent of an American football field in 20 seconds or less.”
Firefighters had to battle multiple simultaneous blazes fueled by strong winds, themselves fueled by the force of Hurricane Dora.
Faced with the speed of the progression of the flames, the survivors of Lahaina had to flee without looking back, sometimes even throwing themselves into the ocean to escape. The fire was “as intense as hell”, says Ekolu Brayden Hoapili, moved to have had to “leave a lot of people behind” him.
This disaster comes in the middle of a summer marked by a series of extreme weather events all over the planet, including an intense heat wave in the southern United States, phenomena linked to global warming according to experts.
They have spread all the more easily since Maui has had less rain this year than usual. The western part of the island, where Lahaina is located, is currently experiencing “severe” to “moderate” drought, according to the US Drought Monitor.
08/12/2023 20:45:06 – Lahaina (United States) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
