Latest news with #Lahaina
CTV News
12-07-2025
- Climate
- CTV News
Could this Hawaii community be the next Lahaina? Some residents fear a similar wildfire fate
Calvin Endo looks out at private property behind his home where tall grass grows brown during wildfire season on Saturday, July 5, 2025, in Waianae, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Jennifer Sinco Kelleher) WAIANAE, Hawaii — When there's enough rain, the mountain-framed expanse of vacant land behind Calvin Endo's house looks like the lush and verdant landscape that makes tropical Hawaii famous. But in the summer, when the jungle of eyeball-high invasive grasses and spindly tree branches fade to brown, he fears it could become a fiery hellscape. This isn't Maui, where most of Lahaina burned down during a massive wildfire in August 2023. Endo's duplex is in Waianae on the west side of Oahu. But Waianae and Lahaina have a lot in common. They're both situated on parched western island coasts, with road access pinched by topography, and are bastions of Native Hawaiian culture. Both have sections crisscrossed by overhead power lines atop aging wooden poles, like those that fell in high winds and caused the Lahaina fire. There's even a Lahaina Street through the heart of Makaha, Endo's neighborhood along the Waianae coast. 'It can happen to us,' said Endo, who moved to the Makaha Meadows subdivision in 1980, soon after it was built. 'We can have a repeat of Lahaina if somebody doesn't do anything about the brush in the back.' In recent days, two wildfires a few miles away, including a July 6 blaze that left a 94-year-old woman dead, proved his worst fears could become reality. It's been nearly two years since Lahaina provided a worst-case scenario of the destruction from wind-whipped flames fueled by overgrown brush. With 102 deaths, it's the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century. In the months afterward, the number of Hawaii communities participating in the Firewise network, a nationally recognized program that helps communities with resources for safeguarding homes, more than doubled to 35 — but none in western Oahu. Even though Waianae residents have long known about their wildfire risks, only now is one of its neighborhoods close to gaining Firewise status. Communities become Firewise by organizing a committee, creating a hazard assessment, developing an action plan and volunteering hours toward reducing risk, such as removing overgrown brush. Firewise tracks a community's progress, connects residents with experts, and provides ideas and funding for mitigation, workshops and training. Identical risk The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service considers Lahaina and Waianae to be at much higher risk than other U.S. communities for a wildland fire, noted Honolulu Fire Department Battalion Chief Keith Ito. 'The weather, the winds, they're pretty much identical,' he said. 'With all that being said, I think that the high-risk wildfire potential is a state-wide problem, not really specific to Waianae or Lahaina.' Nani Barretto, co-director of the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, struggles to understand why fire-prone communities like Waianae have yet to join the Firewise movement. There are also no Firewise communities on the island of Kauai. 'Just because we are proactive in getting the word out, it doesn't mean the right people are getting the information,' she said. 'For Maui, it took a very devastating event for them to join.' Organizing a community can be challenging because it requires residents to put in time and step up as leaders, she said. Endo, who is a longtime member of the Waianae Coast Neighborhood Board, had never even heard of Firewise until recently. A development called Sea Country, near the neighborhood that was recently ordered to evacuate during a wildfire, is close to becoming the fist Firewise community in Waianae, said Andria Tupola, a resident who also represents the coast on the Honolulu City Council. The process got underway around 2018 but picked up momentum after Lahaina, she said. Sea Country recently completed a hazard assessment and has planned some mitigation events, including a park cleanup in August, said Ashley Bare, the Firewise support specialist for Oahu. Emergency route and hungry sheep Lahaina also provided the spark for opening an emergency access route in Waianae, Tupola said. Farrington Highway, the main artery along the coast, can get clogged with just an accident. Military officials who control a mountain pass above Waianae started talking about letting civilians access the route after Lahaina, she said. During the July 6 fire, state and military officials were ready to open the road as a way out of the coast and into central Oahu, said state Rep. Darius Kila, who represents the area. A Hawaiian homestead community in Waianae's Nanakuli Valley is also trying to achieve Firewise status, said Diamond Badajos, spokesperson for the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. Home to the largest concentration of Native Hawaiians, Waianae is rich in Hawaiian culture and history. But much of the coast also struggles with poverty and homelessness. Residents have grown accustomed to wildfires in the dry summer months, said Republican state Rep. Chris Muraoka: 'It's almost like if it doesn't burn, something's not right.' However, Muraoka said he thinks communities along the coast would benefit more from fire-prevention and safety education in schools rather than organizing to be Firewise. Muraoka, who lives in Makaha, said communities in Waianae have unique needs that being Firewise might not address, including sections with neighborhoods that are more spread out than in Lahaina and blazes that are often started by arsonists or kids playing with fire. Some residents already do what they can, especially with the dry season underway. Endo often tries to clear brush on private property behind his home himself, to create a firebreak. Some properties in Waianae Valley use sheep to eat the overgrown vegetation. Retired firefighter Shermaih 'Bulla' Iaea recalls fighting blazes in the brush near Endo's home and Makaha Elementary School. In 2018, his farm burned down during high winds from a passing hurricane. He was using a herd of sheep on his property until wild dogs killed them in April. Neighborhoods banding together to become Firewise is another tool that will help, he said. 'There's a 100 percent chance that will happen here,' he said. 'I thought it would never happen to me. Now I'm trying to ring the bells. I'm trying to sound the alarm.' 'Relentless sun' Being one of the poorest communities in the state is a major factor preventing Waianae from becoming Firewise, said Kila, who lives near where the July 6 fire happened. Before the summer, the Democratic lawmaker sent a letter to Hawaiian Electric and telecom companies urging 'immediate and coordinated action' to address dangerous, sagging utility lines on aging wooden poles along the coast. It's not clear why Makaha ended up with a long street named Lahaina, which can mean 'relentless sun' in Hawaiian. But like the west Maui town, it fits the sunny west Oahu neighborhood, which is home to the world-famous Makaha surfing beach. Some neighborhoods above Lahaina Street are newer and have underground utilities, like Endo's. But toward the ocean, older neighborhoods are laced by overhead power lines. That worries Glen Kila, a Hawaiian cultural practitioner in Waianae, who is not related to Darius Kila. Power lines are blamed for sparking the Lahaina blaze. 'If that happens to Waianae,' he said, 'we're done.' Jennifer Sinco Kelleher, The Associated Press
Al Arabiya
12-07-2025
- Climate
- Al Arabiya
Could this hawaii community be the next lahaina? Some residents fear a similar wildfire fate
WAIANAE, Hawaii (AP) – When there's enough rain, the mountain-framed expanse of vacant land behind Calvin Endo's house looks like the lush and verdant landscape that makes tropical Hawaii famous. But in the summer, when the jungle of eyeball-high invasive grasses and spindly tree branches fade to brown, he fears it could become a fiery hellscape. This isn't Maui, where most of Lahaina burned down during a massive wildfire in August 2023. Endo's duplex is in Waianae, on the west side of Oahu. But Waianae and Lahaina have a lot in common. They're both situated on parched western island coasts with road access pinched by topography and are bastions of Native Hawaiian culture. Both have sections crisscrossed by overhead power lines atop aging wooden poles like those that fell in high winds and caused the Lahaina fire. There's even a Lahaina Street through the heart of Makaha, Endo's neighborhood along the Waianae coast. 'It can happen to us,' said Endo, who moved to the Makaha Meadows subdivision in 1980 soon after it was built. 'We can have a repeat of Lahaina if somebody doesn't do anything about the brush in the back.' In recent days, two wildfires a few miles away–including a July 6 blaze that left a 94-year-old woman dead–proved his worst fears could become reality. It's been nearly two years since Lahaina provided a worst-case scenario of the destruction from wind-whipped flames fueled by overgrown brush. With 102 deaths, it's the deadliest US wildfire in a century. In the months afterward, the number of Hawaii communities participating in the Firewise network–a nationally recognized program that helps communities with resources for safeguarding homes–more than doubled to 35–but none in western Oahu. Even though Waianae residents have long known about their wildfire risks, only now is one of its neighborhoods close to gaining Firewise status. Communities become Firewise by organizing a committee, creating a hazard assessment, developing an action plan, and volunteering hours toward reducing risk, such as removing overgrown brush. Firewise tracks a community's progress, connects residents with experts, and provides ideas and funding for mitigation workshops and training. The US Department of Agriculture Forest Service considers Lahaina and Waianae to be at much higher risk than other US communities for a wildland fire, noted Honolulu Fire Department Battalion Chief Keith Ito. 'The weather, the winds–they're pretty much identical,' he said. 'With all that being said, I think that the high-risk wildfire potential is a state-wide problem, not really specific to Waianae or Lahaina.' Nani Barretto, co-director of the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, struggles to understand why fire-prone communities like Waianae have yet to join the Firewise movement. There are also no Firewise communities on the island of Kauai. 'Just because we are proactive in getting the word out, it doesn't mean the right people are getting the information,' she said. 'For Maui, it took a very devastating event for them to join.' Organizing a community can be challenging because it requires residents to put in time and step up as leaders, she said. Endo, who is a longtime member of the Waianae Coast Neighborhood Board, had never even heard of Firewise until recently. A development called Sea Country near the neighborhood that was recently ordered to evacuate during a wildfire is close to becoming the fist Firewise community in Waianae, said Andria Tupola, a resident who also represents the coast on the Honolulu City Council. The process got underway around 2018 but picked up momentum after Lahaina, she said. Sea Country recently completed a hazard assessment and has planned some mitigation events including a park cleanup in August, said Ashley Bare, the Firewise support specialist for Oahu. Lahaina also provided the spark for opening an emergency access route in Waianae, Tupola said. Farrington Highway, the main artery along the coast, can get clogged with just an accident. Military officials who control a mountain pass above Waianae started talking about letting civilians access the route after Lahaina, she said. During the July 6 fire, state and military officials were ready to open the road as a way out of the coast and into central Oahu, said state Rep. Darius Kila, who represents the area. A Hawaiian homestead community in Waianae's Nanakuli Valley is also trying to achieve Firewise status, said Diamond Badajos, spokesperson for the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. Home to the largest concentration of Native Hawaiians, Waianae is rich in Hawaiian culture and history. But much of the coast also struggles with poverty and homelessness. Residents have grown accustomed to wildfires in the dry summer months, said Republican state Rep. Chris Muraoka: 'It's almost like if it doesn't burn, something's not right.' However, Muraoka said he thinks communities along the coast would benefit more from fire-prevention and safety education in schools rather than organizing to be Firewise. Muraoka, who lives in Makaha, said communities in Waianae have unique needs that being Firewise might not address, including sections with neighborhoods that are more spread out than in Lahaina and blazes that are often started by arsonists or kids playing with fire. Some residents already do what they can, especially with the dry season underway. Endo often tries to clear brush on private property behind his home himself to create a firebreak. Some properties in Waianae Valley use sheep to eat the overgrown vegetation. Retired firefighter Shermaih Bulla Iaea recalls fighting blazes in the brush near Endo's home and Makaha Elementary School. In 2018, his farm burned down during high winds from a passing hurricane. He was using a herd of sheep on his property until wild dogs killed them in April. Neighborhoods banding together to become Firewise is another tool that will help, he said. 'There's a 100 percent chance that will happen here,' he said. 'I thought it would never happen to me. Now I'm trying to ring the bells. I'm trying to sound the alarm.' Being one of the poorest communities in the state is a major factor preventing Waianae from becoming Firewise, said Kila, who lives near where the July 6 fire happened. Before the summer, the Democratic lawmaker sent a letter to Hawaiian Electric and telecom companies urging immediate and coordinated action to address dangerous sagging utility lines on aging wooden poles along the coast. It's not clear why Makaha ended up with a long street named Lahaina, which can mean 'relentless sun' in Hawaiian. But like the west Maui town, it fits the sunny west Oahu neighborhood, which is home to the world-famous Makaha surfing beach. Some neighborhoods above Lahaina Street are newer and have underground utilities like Endo's. But toward the ocean, older neighborhoods are laced by overhead power lines. That worries Glen Kila, a Hawaiian cultural practitioner in Waianae who is not related to Darius Kila. Power lines are blamed for sparking the Lahaina blaze. 'If that happens to Waianae,' he said, 'we're done.'
Associated Press
12-07-2025
- Climate
- Associated Press
Could this Hawaii community be the next Lahaina? Some residents fear a similar wildfire fate
WAIANAE, Hawaii (AP) — When there's enough rain, the mountain-framed expanse of vacant land behind Calvin Endo's house looks like the lush and verdant landscape that makes tropical Hawaii famous. But in the summer, when the jungle of eyeball-high invasive grasses and spindly tree branches fade to brown, he fears it could become a fiery hellscape. This isn't Maui, where most of Lahaina burned down during a massive wildfire in August 2023. Endo's duplex is in Waianae on the west side of Oahu. But Waianae and Lahaina have a lot in common. They're both situated on parched western island coasts, with road access pinched by topography, and are bastions of Native Hawaiian culture. Both have sections crisscrossed by overhead power lines atop aging wooden poles, like those that fell in high winds and caused the Lahaina fire. There's even a Lahaina Street through the heart of Makaha, Endo's neighborhood along the Waianae coast. 'It can happen to us,' said Endo, who moved to the Makaha Meadows subdivision in 1980, soon after it was built. 'We can have a repeat of Lahaina if somebody doesn't do anything about the brush in the back.' In recent days, two wildfires a few miles away, including a July 6 blaze that left a 94-year-old woman dead, proved his worst fears could become reality. It's been nearly two years since Lahaina provided a worst-case scenario of the destruction from wind-whipped flames fueled by overgrown brush. With 102 deaths, it's the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century. In the months afterward, the number of Hawaii communities participating in the Firewise network, a nationally recognized program that helps communities with resources for safeguarding homes, more than doubled to 35 — but none in western Oahu. Even though Waianae residents have long known about their wildfire risks, only now is one of its neighborhoods close to gaining Firewise status. Communities become Firewise by organizing a committee, creating a hazard assessment, developing an action plan and volunteering hours toward reducing risk, such as removing overgrown brush. Firewise tracks a community's progress, connects residents with experts, and provides ideas and funding for mitigation, workshops and training. Identical risk The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service considers Lahaina and Waianae to be at much higher risk than other U.S. communities for a wildland fire, noted Honolulu Fire Department Battalion Chief Keith Ito. 'The weather, the winds, they're pretty much identical,' he said. 'With all that being said, I think that the high-risk wildfire potential is a state-wide problem, not really specific to Waianae or Lahaina.' Nani Barretto, co-director of the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, struggles to understand why fire-prone communities like Waianae have yet to join the Firewise movement. There are also no Firewise communities on the island of Kauai. 'Just because we are proactive in getting the word out, it doesn't mean the right people are getting the information,' she said. 'For Maui, it took a very devastating event for them to join.' Organizing a community can be challenging because it requires residents to put in time and step up as leaders, she said. Endo, who is a longtime member of the Waianae Coast Neighborhood Board, had never even heard of Firewise until recently. A development called Sea Country, near the neighborhood that was recently ordered to evacuate during a wildfire, is close to becoming the fist Firewise community in Waianae, said Andria Tupola, a resident who also represents the coast on the Honolulu City Council. The process got underway around 2018 but picked up momentum after Lahaina, she said. Sea Country recently completed a hazard assessment and has planned some mitigation events, including a park cleanup in August, said Ashley Bare, the Firewise support specialist for Oahu. Emergency route and hungry sheep Lahaina also provided the spark for opening an emergency access route in Waianae, Tupola said. Farrington Highway, the main artery along the coast, can get clogged with just an accident. Military officials who control a mountain pass above Waianae started talking about letting civilians access the route after Lahaina, she said. During the July 6 fire, state and military officials were ready to open the road as a way out of the coast and into central Oahu, said state Rep. Darius Kila, who represents the area. A Hawaiian homestead community in Waianae's Nanakuli Valley is also trying to achieve Firewise status, said Diamond Badajos, spokesperson for the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. Home to the largest concentration of Native Hawaiians, Waianae is rich in Hawaiian culture and history. But much of the coast also struggles with poverty and homelessness. Residents have grown accustomed to wildfires in the dry summer months, said Republican state Rep. Chris Muraoka: 'It's almost like if it doesn't burn, something's not right.' However, Muraoka said he thinks communities along the coast would benefit more from fire-prevention and safety education in schools rather than organizing to be Firewise. Muraoka, who lives in Makaha, said communities in Waianae have unique needs that being Firewise might not address, including sections with neighborhoods that are more spread out than in Lahaina and blazes that are often started by arsonists or kids playing with fire. Some residents already do what they can, especially with the dry season underway. Endo often tries to clear brush on private property behind his home himself, to create a firebreak. Some properties in Waianae Valley use sheep to eat the overgrown vegetation. Retired firefighter Shermaih 'Bulla' Iaea recalls fighting blazes in the brush near Endo's home and Makaha Elementary School. In 2018, his farm burned down during high winds from a passing hurricane. He was using a herd of sheep on his property until wild dogs killed them in April. Neighborhoods banding together to become Firewise is another tool that will help, he said. 'There's a 100 percent chance that will happen here,' he said. 'I thought it would never happen to me. Now I'm trying to ring the bells. I'm trying to sound the alarm.' 'Relentless sun' Being one of the poorest communities in the state is a major factor preventing Waianae from becoming Firewise, said Kila, who lives near where the July 6 fire happened. Before the summer, the Democratic lawmaker sent a letter to Hawaiian Electric and telecom companies urging 'immediate and coordinated action' to address dangerous, sagging utility lines on aging wooden poles along the coast. It's not clear why Makaha ended up with a long street named Lahaina, which can mean 'relentless sun' in Hawaiian. But like the west Maui town, it fits the sunny west Oahu neighborhood, which is home to the world-famous Makaha surfing beach. Some neighborhoods above Lahaina Street are newer and have underground utilities, like Endo's. But toward the ocean, older neighborhoods are laced by overhead power lines. That worries Glen Kila, a Hawaiian cultural practitioner in Waianae, who is not related to Darius Kila. Power lines are blamed for sparking the Lahaina blaze. 'If that happens to Waianae,' he said, 'we're done.'
Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Kristi Noem claims 1 in 6 survivors of Lahaina wildfires were forced to trade sexual favors for supplies
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has claimed one in six survivors of the Lahaina wildfires in Hawaii had to trade sexual and other favors to get basic supplies. The comments were seemingly in reference to a report on female Filipino survivors, which one of the authors called a 'gross manipulation' of the report, according to Politico. At a review meeting for the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday, Noem said, 'After the wildfires in Maui, residents voiced concerns that every FEMA employee that they spoke with had different answers.' 'None of them had conversations that resulted in getting assistance that was helpful or any clarity in their situations,' she added. 'The situation in Lahaina was so bad that one in six survivors were forced to trade sexual favors, other favors for just basic supplies.' The study on Filipino female survivors was conducted by Tagnawa, which states that it is a 'Filipino feminist disaster response organization' in Hawaii. The review included responses from 70 female Filipino fire survivors and found that 16 percent had engaged in 'survival sex in exchange for basic necessities post-disaster,' with 'a landlord, an employer, family members, friends and acquaintances.' One of the authors of the report, Khara Jabola-Carolus, told Politico that the Trump administration had misinterpreted the findings. 'I'm more concerned about just the gross manipulation of using that statistic to do the opposite of what the report calls for,' she told the outlet. 'Like funding FEMA to improve their response for women's needs.' In a May press release, DHS states that the report showed 'FEMA's horrific neglect and mismanagement under the Biden Administration.' At the FEMA review meeting Noem said, 'This job of remaking this agency is not nearly as simple as it should be.' 'Because we're up against decades of gross mismanagement and negligence,' she added. 'The list of FEMA's failures is staggering. The scale of those failures is matched only by their longevity. FEMA has been disastrous at times, incompetent at times. And not just in the last few years but for decades.' President Donald Trump has been eyeing the shutdown of the agency for some time. Last month, he said he wants states to stop using the agency. The Trump administration has canceled FEMA grants worth billions intended for local projects to protect communities from natural disasters. At the same time, White House officials have praised the agency's work on responding to the floods in the Texas Hill Country, where more than one hundred people have been killed.
New York Times
09-07-2025
- Climate
- New York Times
We Can Adapt and Prepare for Floods. But Will We?
Two summers ago, in Hawaii, flames blasted by winds upward of 80 miles per hour rolled downslope like an avalanche of fire, destroying Maui's Indigenous capital, Lahaina, and killing 102 in the deadliest American wildfire in more than a century. The death toll from Friday's floods in Texas Hill Country has now exceeded it. The flooding killed at least 119, including dozens of children from Camp Mystic, and according to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, at least 173 other people are missing. The disaster is one of the most lethal the country has faced this century, and yet the tsunami-like storm surge itself competes with the death toll for sheer horror. When a river rises 26 feet in 45 minutes, it is hard to know what might've been done to staunch the damage — or to believe that we are anything close to adequately prepared for the storms to come. Too often, we're responding to obvious threats of weather disaster less by properly adapting than by acclimating to them — with government offering a kind of shrugging indifference, too. Think of flooding disasters and you're likely to imagine hurricanes walloping the coasts — Harvey, Sandy and perhaps above all Katrina, which in 2005 killed more than 1,800, sent a major American city into a decade-long tailspin, and seemed at least temporarily to discredit not just a president but also his entire party. Last year, Helene offered a novel variation on the harrowing hurricane script, moving inland and ultimately inflicting much more devastation there, especially in western North Carolina, partly because the region was so unaccustomed to, and unprepared for, hurricane-scale flooding. These days, more and more disaster stories appear to be playing out far from the coasts, in defiance of naïve intuitions about climate risk and even of our recent experience of climate horror. Five years ago, I would have told you that the most searing reminders of the worsening crisis were images of wildfire. Over the last few years, though, I've been more and more struck by harrowing images of inland flooding, with cities and towns entirely overrun with water, their streets transformed into rivers, and everything trapped or left behind in them turned into so much flotsam. These images are surreal showcases of a novel-seeming disaster; taken together, they also sharply expand our conceptual model of defensible space. In the United States, the database of billion-dollar disasters long maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has drawn criticism in recent years, for failing to distinguish among the relative contributions of intensifying weather extremes, patterns of development and economic growth to eye-popping increases in the number of such disasters; this spring the Trump administration officially retired the database. But as a simple tally of dollars in damage, the database tells at least one undeniable and unmistakable story about the rapidly growing nominal cost of extreme weather. In 2024, five hurricanes crossed the billion-dollar threshold, as did one wildfire, two winter storms and one 'drought event.' More quotidian 'severe storm events' crossed the threshold 17 times. Almost two-thirds of spectacular-damage events that made the list came from unspectacular-sounding storms. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
