HONOLULU (AP) — Drought, a lack of preparation, poor communication — a handful of reports from research organizations and government agencies have detailed some of what went wrong when a catastrophic wildfire burned through the historic Maui town of Lahaina last year, killing 102 people.
Now a new report from the Maui Fire Department and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives attempts to answer perhaps the biggest question of all: Exactly where and how did the Aug. 8, 2023, wildfire — the deadliest in the U.S. in over a century — begin?
The Maui Fire Department’s Cause and Origin report, with a summary of the ATF investigation’s findings included as an appendix, was released Wednesday. The agencies did not address liability, but both found that the fire that destroyed much of the town was a rekindling of a blaze that began earlier that morning when a broken power line hit the ground, igniting brush near a large subdivision.
Here's what to know:
Many things went wrong before and during the disaster. In the months before, no significant steps were taken to mitigate wildfire risk, though in previous years other brush fires destroyed homes after starting in the same area. In the weeks before, the landscape went from lush to bone-dry from a flash drought.
The National Weather Service predicted high winds days in advance of the disaster, issuing a “red flag warning” on the fire danger. A forecaster even emailed fire managers an “unprecedented advance warning” on Aug. 4, 2023, of the danger that would develop four days later. Investigators reviewing the emergency response said they found “no evidence” that Hawaii officials made preparations for it.
Fire broke out near Lahaina early Aug. 8 after a live power line fell and hit overgrown brush near the edge of town. A Maui Fire Department crew responded, staying at the scene for several hours until they believed the fire was extinguished.
After they left, flames were spotted again. Firefighters rushed back, but this time they were were no match for the wind and flames.
The ATF investigators could not determine exactly how the fire rekindled but said wind was the most likely explanation. It could have rekindled from burning material blown into a gully, or the burning material could have been inadvertently pushed there by heavy equipment that was being used to create a firebreak, according to the investigation. The wind also could have simply ignited smoldering material that was initially hidden beneath dirt and ash.
Either way, the catastrophe was the result of one fire, which originated when Hawaiian Electric utility equipment failed and ignited overgrown brush, both agencies said.
The high winds knocked out electricity and cellphone networks went down, leaving people without phones, internet, television and radio — and no way to receive emergency alerts or reach loved ones. Police and fire crews delivered warnings door to door, but Maui County officials failed to sound emergency sirens telling residents to flee.
Many residents decided to leave on their own when they saw flames or smelled smoke. But police closed key routes out of town to protect people from downed lines toppled by the wind. Most of the traffic was routed along the same downtown street, gridlocking the town.
Meanwhile, 911 operators and emergency dispatchers were overwhelmed with calls from those able to get service.
One family made it out by swerving around a barricade blocking Honoapiilani Highway, the main coastal road leading in and out of Lahaina.
The Maui Police Department said 102 people between the ages of 7 and 97 died, and two more remain missing and unaccounted for. More than two-thirds of the victims were in their 60s or older. Some died in their vehicles. Others died in burning buildings or outside as they tried to flee.
Those who were close enough jumped into the ocean while others huddled behind a seawall, fighting to survive the choppy, wind-whipped waters while choking on acrid smoke and dodging flaming debris. Many of those in the ocean survived, but some bodies were recovered along the seawall and in the water.
The toll surpassed that of the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California, which left 85 dead and destroyed the town of Paradise. A century earlier, the 1918 Cloquet Fire broke out in drought-stricken northern Minnesota, destroying thousands of homes and killing hundreds.
Thousands of Lahaina residents have sued various parties they believe to be at fault for the fire, including Hawaiian Electric, Maui County and the state of Hawaii.
A few days before the one-year anniversary of the wildfires, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green announced a $4 billion settlement. That’s the amount the defendants — including Hawaiian Electric, the state, Maui County, large landowners and others — have agreed to pay to settle claims.
But the deal is tied up in court. The Hawaii Supreme Court agreed last week to weigh in on whether insurance companies can go after the defendants separately to recoup what they’ve paid to policyholders. Lawyers for people seeking compensation fear allowing insurance companies to sue Hawaiian Electric and others will subvert the deal, drain what is available to pay fire victims and lead to prolonged litigation.
If the court rules that the insurance companies do have an independent right to pursue their own suits against the same defendants, the settlement agreement falls apart. If the Supreme Court says insurance companies can’t do that, then lawyers say the process to get money to victims will begin.
The Hawaii Attorney General's office tasked the Fire Safety Research Institute with conducting a three-phase investigation of the fire. The first phase included a detailed timeline of the fire. The second phase report found that key agencies including the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, the Maui Fire Department, Maui Police and others failed to develop plans for dealing with severe wildfire risk. The third report is expected to include recommendations for avoiding future disasters. It has not yet been released.
The Maui Fire Department released an after-action report produced by the Western Fire Chiefs Association, detailing the challenges the agency faced including poorly stocked equipment. It also showed the many ways firefighters risked their lives to rescue residents, including some who carried victims piggyback over downed powerlines.
The Maui Police Department also released an after-action report that detailed the agency's response and included 32 recommendations, many focused on improving communications, obtaining better equipment and upgrading technology.
The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety examined the Lahaina disaster to determine steps communities can take to reduce the likelihood that similar conflagrations will occur. That report found that establishing fuel breaks around communities, using fire-resistant materials and reducing flammable connections between homes can help prevent the spread of flames.
FILE - Damaged property lies scattered in the aftermath of a wildfire in Lahaina, Hawaii, Aug. 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
FILE - A man sits on the Lahaina historic banyan tree damaged by a wildfire, Aug. 11, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)
FILE - Wilted palm trees line a destroyed property, Friday, Dec. 8, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)
FILE - Photos of victims are displayed under white crosses at a memorial for the August 2023 wildfire victims, above the Lahaina Bypass highway, Dec. 6, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)
In a debate that evoked a calmer era in American politics, Tim Walz and JD Vance went after each other’s running mates Tuesday and sought to shore up their campaigns’ vulnerabilities at a time of renewed fears of a regional war in the Middle East and sadness over devastation from Hurricane Helene.
Meanwhile, those new trials — along with a dockworkers strike that threatens the U.S. economy — are looming over the final weeks of the presidential campaign and could help shape the public mood as voters decide between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.
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Here’s the latest:
The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris announced Wednesday that Walz would have his first appearance on a late-night talk show during an upcoming trip to California, and Kimmel posted on Instagram, “I am pleased to announce that Governor Tim Walz is coming to @JimmyKimmelLive.”
The comedian said Walz would “chat and fix our transmission on Monday 10/7.” The Harris campaign produced a video of Walz fixing the cruise control on his 1979 International Harvester.
Oct. 7 is less than a month before Election Day, but also marks the first anniversary of Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel, which sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.
A consequence of the prevalence of election misinformation: an troubling uptick in physical threats against election officials of both parties and, in some cases, their families, often based on false claims about the 2020 election. Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, called it “corrosive” to democracy and said it’s something the public needs to collectively fight.
“Those election officials, they are not faceless bureaucrats,” Easterly said. “They’re folks we see in the community every single day. And they’re not doing this for pay. They’re not doing it for glory. They are doing it because they believe in the process of democracy.”
Donald Trump laid the groundwork to try to overturn the 2020 election even before he lost, knowingly pushed false claims of voter fraud and “resorted to crimes” in his failed bid to cling to power, according to a newly unsealed court filing from prosecutors that lays out fresh details from the landmark criminal case against the former president.
The filing from special counsel Jack Smith’s team offers the most comprehensive view to date of what prosecutors intend to prove if the case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the election reaches trial. Though a months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself have chronicled in stark detail Trump’s efforts to undo the election, the new filing cites previously unknown accounts offered by Trump’s closest aides to paint a portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who while losing his grip on the White House “used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process.”
“So what?” the filing quotes Trump as telling an aide after being alerted that his vice president, Mike Pence, was in potential danger after a crowd of violent supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The details don’t matter,” Trump said, when told by an adviser that a lawyer who was mounting his legal challenges wouldn’t be able to prove the false allegations in court, the filing states.
The filing was submitted, initially under seal, following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they take in office, narrowing the scope of the prosecution charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the results of the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Read more here.
Anti-abortion leaders said Wednesday that they’re undeterred after Donald Trump said he would veto a federal abortion ban, the first time he has explicitly said so after previously refusing to answer questions on the subject.
During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, the Republican presidential nominee posted on his social media platform Truth Social that “everyone knows I would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it.”
With the election less than five weeks away, Trump has been trying to thread a divide between his own base of anti-abortion supporters and the majority of Americans who support abortion rights. The former president is trying to make up ground with women — a group that views Democratic nominee Kamala Harris more favorably nationally — in the handful of battleground states that will likely determine the winner.
“Trump’s statement last night is just one more example of Republicans trying desperately to rebrand themselves on the issue of abortion,” said Ryan Stitzlein, vice president of political and government relations at the national abortion rights organization Reproductive Freedom for All. “But at the end of the day, the only thing that has actually changed is their rhetoric on the issue. It’s their reaction to seeing the political consequences for this deeply unpopular policy position.”
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Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said Wednesday that “I need to be more specific on that” and acknowledged he misspoke during a debate with his Republican rival a day earlier when he said he had “become friends with school shooters.”
“I’m super passionate about this,” the former schoolteacher told reporters in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He clarified that he had gotten to know the parents of victims in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting while he was in Congress, as well as the activist and school-shooting survivor David Hogg, calling him a “good friend of mine.”
Said Walz, “I need to be more specific on that, but I am passionate about this.”
Walz also acknowledged again that he “got his dates wrong” when he claimed he was in China during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
Security for America’s election systems has become so robust that Russia, Iran or any other foreign adversary won't be able to alter the outcome of this year’s presidential race, the head of the nation’s cybersecurity agency said Wednesday.
Jen Easterly told The Associated Press in an interview that voting, ballot-counting and other election infrastructure is more secure today than it’s ever been.
“Malicious actors, even if they tried, could not have an impact at scale such that there would be a material effect on the outcome of the election,” said Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Federal agencies have warned of growing attempts by Russia and Iran in particular to influence voters before the Nov. 5 election and election conspiracy theories have left millions of Americans doubting the validity of election results.
Easterly says those efforts are primarily aimed at sowing discord among Americans and undermining faith in the security of the nation’s elections.
Betting on the outcome of U.S. Congressional elections can resume, at least temporarily, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dissolved an order it had previously issued that prevented New York startup company Kalshi from taking bets on which political party would control the House and Senate after this November’s elections.
The ruling clears the way for such betting to resume while the court further considers the underlying issues in the case.
So far, Kalshi has only offered bets on congressional races; it was not immediately clear whether they plan to expand offerings to include the presidential election.
The court said it could reconsider a ban if the commission provides new evidence of serious harm to the public interest in the coming weeks.
“This strike is about fairness," the vice president said in the Wednesday statement. “Foreign-owned shipping companies have made record profits and executive compensation has grown. The Longshoremen, who play a vital role transporting essential goods across America, deserve a fair share of these record profits.”
In the statement, she criticized her opponent, former President Donald Trump, as someone who wants to take the country “back to a time before workers had the freedom to organize.”
“Donald Trump makes empty promise after empty promise to American workers, but never delivers," Harris said. “He thinks our economy should only work for those who own the big skyscrapers, not those who actually build them.”
“I feel very strongly that U.S. Steel needs to remain a U.S. company, and that the people working there need to be American workers,” Harris during an interview with KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh.
It’s a position consistent with the White House.
Pressed on U.S. Steel saying it could be forced to move its headquarters from Pittsburgh and cut jobs if the deal doesn’t go through, Harris told the TV station that it's her “priority to keep jobs in Pittsburg.”
President Joe Biden has opposed the acquisition of U.S. Steel to a foreign entity and his administration has indicated it could move to block the sale amid a government review of it. Since taking over for Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, Harris has repeatedly taken a similar stance.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz is holding a bus tour through central Pennsylvania with stops in the capital of Harrisburg, as well as York, and Reading.
In York, he’s being joined by Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman for a rally. While on the tour, Walz plans to meet with labor organizers and leaders from rural areas and the Hispanic community.
Vice President Kamala Harris had originally been set to do the bus tour with Walz following Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate in New York, but she's instead heading to Georgia on Wednesday to see areas hard-hit by Hurricane Helene.
On Saturday, Walz has fundraisers scheduled for Cleveland and Cincinnati, then will head to California and Washington state. That swing will feature campaign stops in Reno, Nevada — a makeup for a planned trip in September that Walz scrapped because of wildfires -- and Arizona, where early voting will be kicking off.
The Harris campaign says Walz will also increase the number of media interviews he's doing post-debate, with an eye to reaching target voters across key demographics.
Over the past four years, President Joe Biden has jetted off to survey damage and console victims after tornadoes, wildfires and tropical storms. It’s not a role Kamala Harris has played as vice president.
But on Wednesday, they'll both fan out across the Southeast to grapple with the damage from Hurricane Helene, seeking to demonstrate commitment and competence in helping devastated communities after Donald Trump’s false claims about their administration’s response. Biden is heading to North and South Carolina, while Harris is going to Georgia.
Harris’ stop will also serve as a political test in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. She’s trying to step into the role for which Biden is best known — showing the empathy Americans expect in times of tragedy — in the closing stretch of her campaign for president.
Former President Donald Trump is going back to Butler, Pennsylvania, where the world saw him pump his fist and beseech followers to “fight,” even as blood streaked his face from a would-be assassin’s bullet.
In announcing his return, the current Republican nominee said he planned to “celebrate a unifying vision for America’s future in an event like the world has never seen before.”
The question is: Is Butler ready?
While many are predicting a large crowd to hear Trump speak back at the very Farm Show property where a bullet grazed his right ear on July 13, there's also apprehension in town, along with a sense that Butler is still healing.
This combination image shows Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, left, and Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, right, during a vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo)
Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, talks with Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after the vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, at Discovery World in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Andy Manis)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to members of the media, Tuesday Oct. 1, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
