More than a year after the Maui wildfire, which left 102 dead and displaced more than 12,000 people, officials confirmed the cause of the massive blaze.
Discussing the new report from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the County of Maui Department of Fire and Public Safety, Maui Fire Department Chief Brad Ventura said "the origin and cause of the Lahaina fire is clear."
"The re-energization of broken power lines caused sparks that ignited unmaintained vegetation in the area,” he explained. “Exactly how this fire rekindled in the afternoon is considered undetermined with multiple plausible hypotheses fitting the known data.”
The report determined the fire was accidental and began as a single blaze at utility pole 25 off Lahainaluna Road on the morning of Aug. 8, 2023.
The fire proceeded in two phases, with the first concluding just after 2 p.m. when fire crews left the scene of that fire after all indications showed that the fire had been fully contained and extinguished.
At 2:52 p.m. a rekindle event occurred in a gully next to the previous burn area.
“A piece of smoldering material hidden in the unmanaged vegetation in the adjacent gully was fueled and reignited by a severe wind event and the fire resumed with disastrous consequences,” Ventura said.
While wind was the most likely cause of the fire’s rekindling, the ATF’s report said investigators could not rule out another possibility: that the operator of a bulldozer, trying to help firefighters contain the blaze, could have unwittingly pushed smoldering debris to the gully’s edge, only to have it erupt in flames hours later.
“The close proximity of the freshly cut firebreak to the western edge of the gully does not afford investigators the ability to rule out the possibility that while cutting the firebreak, the operator unknowingly moved still burning vegetation or smoldering debris into the gully,” the report said.
The owner of the company that provided the bulldozer told ATF investigators less than two weeks after the fire that he had shown up because a friend who lived nearby asked for help. The owner did not respond to several requests for a follow-up interview, the report said. Neither the owner nor members of his crew were identified in the report.
Video from inside the bulldozer showed it piling loose soil and burned vegetation at the edge of the gully, the report said.
Bulldozers driven by volunteers and contractors are frequently used to protect towns and farms from wildfires across the western U.S., though some groups have questioned their effectiveness in extreme weather conditions. (WHO13)
The response to the deadliest fire in more than a century was widely criticized at the time. Emergency sirens never rang out, there was a delay in releasing water, utility trucks from Hawaiian Electric reportedly blocked the only way out for those trying to flee, and there were multiple communications breakdowns that stymied response efforts.
CBS News has learned Maui’s emergency operations chief had no background in disaster response. It’s his department that is responsible for setting off warning sirens, which rang silent during the fires. #maui #wildfires #Lahaina #MauiFire
— Norah O'Donnell 🇺🇸 (@NorahODonnell) August 16, 2023