HONOLULU (AP) — An investigation by the Hawaii attorney general's office into the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, which destroyed most of the historic town of Lahaina, won’t lead to any criminal charges.
Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez launched an investigation soon after last year's wind-whipped Maui wildfires that claimed 102 lives. The Fire Safety Research Institute was selected to provide a scientific analysis of the fire and recommendations. The first phase of the investigation detailed communications problems while the second phase released last month described how a lack of planning by key agencies hindered efforts to evacuate.
The administrative investigation into past conduct didn't reveal any facts that warranted criminal charges, Lopez said in a statement Thursday.
“Instead, the investigation revealed many instances of great heroism, and I wish to particularly commend Maui’s firefighters and police officers for their professionalism and bravery in extremely difficult circumstances,” the statement said.
The attorney general's report noted some of the challenges facing officials and residents were particular to Hawaii and Maui, including narrow roads clogged with parked cars, private dirt roads blocked by gates and older, wooden homes separated by less than 6 feet (1.8 meters).
The attorney general's office says the third and final phase will include a forward-looking report on the question of how to prevent the August 2023 tragedy from happening again. It's expected to be released early next year.
In a separate investigation, officials with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Maui Fire Department did not address liability but found that the wildfire erupted from an earlier brushfire, sparked by downed power lines, that firefighters believed they had extinguished.
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 have agreed to pay to settle claims.
But the deal is tied up in court. The Hawaii Supreme Court is considering whether insurance companies can go after the defendants separately to recoup what they’ve paid to policyholders.
FILE - Damaged property lies scattered in the aftermath of a wildfire in Lahaina, Hawaii, Aug. 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
FILE - Waiola Church and nearby Lahaina Hongwanji Mission are engulfed in flames along Wainee Street, Aug. 8, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. (Matthew Thayer/The Maui News via AP, File)
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Rocket barrages from Lebanon into northern Israel killed four foreign workers and three Israelis on Thursday, Israeli medics said, the deadliest cross-border strikes in Israel since it invaded Lebanon. Israel kept up airstrikes it says targeted Hezbollah militants across Lebanon, where health authorities on Thursday reported 24 people killed.
U.S. diplomats were in the region pushing for cease-fires in both Lebanon and Gaza, hoping to wind down the wars in the Middle East as the Biden administration enters its final months. Pressure has been building ahead of the U.S. election next week.
In northern Gaza, Israeli forces struck one of the last functioning hospitals, according to the World Heath Organization said, destroying much-needed supplies that the U.N. agency had delivered to the facility. The strikes set off a fire that affected the dialysis unit, destroyed water tanks, damaged the surgery building and injured four medics trying to extinguish the blaze, said the hospital's director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment about a strike on the hospital, which it stormed last week after alleging it was harboring Hamas militants. Gaza's Health Ministry on Thursday condemned Israeli attacks on the hospital and called on the international community to safeguard medical facilities in Gaza.
Projectiles from Lebanon crashed into an agricultural area in Metula, Israel’s northernmost town, killing four foreign workers and an Israeli farmer, local officials said Thursday.
Hours later, the Israeli military reported another volley of some 25 rockets from Lebanon, striking an olive grove in a suburb of the northern Israeli port city of Haifa. That strike killed a 30-year-old man and 60-year-old woman while wounding two others, said Magen David Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organization.
Both Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by Iran, Israel’s regional adversary. Hezbollah did not immediately claim responsibility for Thursday’s rocket fire. Israel’s military said 90 projectiles were fired from Lebanon on Thursday.
Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets, drones and missiles into Israel —and drawing fierce Israeli retaliatory strikes — over the past year since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered Israel’s devastating war in the Palestinian enclave.
The residents of Metula evacuated in October 2023, and only security officials and agricultural workers remain. The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an Israeli organization that advocates for foreign workers, said authorities had put them in danger by allowing them to work along the border without proper protection.
Agricultural areas near Israel’s border are closed military zones that can only be entered with official permission. For the few remaining residents, the thump of interceptions by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and wailing air raid sirens punctuate daily life.
Nonetheless, local officials largely support continuing a ground operation in southern Lebanon.
“If the Israeli government accedes to an agreement brought by (the Biden administration) ... we will not have it because for us this is rehabilitating Hezbollah again on our borders,” said Eitan Davidi, the mayor of the northern town of Margaliot.
Israeli strikes killed 24 people in Lebanon on Thursday, among them 13 people in the country’s eastern Bekaa Valley, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News agency, a day after the Israel’s military warned residents there to evacuate.
The warnings sent thousands of people fleeing and spread panic across the city, known for its colossal Roman ruins.
The Lebanese Health Ministry reported that over the last 24 hours, Israeli bombardments killed 45 people and wounded 110 in various parts of the country.
Jean Fakhry, a local official in the Deir al-Ahmar region in the Bekaa Valley, said Israeli airstrikes pummeling the area turned the main highway “a parking lot” of fleeing cars stuck in traffic.
Around 12,000 displaced people are staying in the area, he said, with most taking refuge in private homes. At one of the shelters in Deir al-Ahmar, families with luggage were still arriving Thursday.
“Our homes were destroyed,” said Zahraa Younis, from the village near Baalbek. “We came with nothing — no clothes or anything else.”
Senior White House aides Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein were in Israel Thursday for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior officials about the conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah.
The meetings focused on efforts to secure a cease-fire deal in Lebanon and to assess new proposals floated by mediators to free Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, according to a U.S. official familiar with planning for the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. The meetings were attended by Netanyahu as well as Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister; David Barnea, the director of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency; and other officials.
But with the U.S. election on Tuesday, hopes for immediate progress appeared remote — particularly in Gaza where Israel has come under criticism for not letting more humanitarian aid into the besieged north.
The death toll from more than a year of war in Gaza passed 43,000 earlier this week, Palestinian health officials reported.
The Awda Hospital in central Gaza said late Thursday it had received 16 bodies of people killed by Israeli bombardment of two houses in Nuseirat refugee camp. The hospital said more than 30 others, including a medic and two journalists, were wounded.
Over the past year, the broadening Israeli campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah has killed 2,865 people there, wounded over 13,000 and devastated Lebanese towns near the border.
Some 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been displaced since Israel escalated the conflict into a full-blown war last month, when it launched a wave of heavy airstrikes that killed Hezbollah’s top leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of his deputies.
A year of Hezbollah rocket attacks have also forced 60,000 Israelis to evacuate from near the border.
Frankel reported from Jerusalem and Tawil from Deir al-Ahmar, Lebanon. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Matt Lee in Washington and Eleanor H. Reich in New York contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Relatives of Palestinian Husam Mallah, 28, center, Abdulaziz Abu al-Samen, 21, right and Ahmad Fahmawi, 19, in the morgue of a local hospital, as the Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike and a third by Israeli gunfire, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Relatives of Palestinian Husam Mallah, 28, take the last look at his body in the morgue of a local hospital, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, play at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced people, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, sit at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, study inside at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
A displaced woman, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with her family amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, walks at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, play at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
A displaced woman, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, holds her daughter at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced people, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel, take shelter inside a church sanctuary, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, play inside a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
A displaced woman, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, changes the diaper of her daughter at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, play at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, listen to a story at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, are reflected in a mirror inside a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Rescue workers use excavators to remove the rubble of a destroyed building that was hit Tuesday night in an Israeli airstrike, as they search for victims in Sarafand, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
A civil defence worker searches for victims in the rubble of a destroyed building hit in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday night, in Sarafand, southern Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Emergency workers carry the body of a victim found in the rubble of a destroyed building hit Tuesday night in an Israeli airstrike in Sarafand, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
