Wildfire 2023

[Muffcabbage]

I can barely think about this.

Do we know if the Banyan tree survived?

The twitter video above was taken from near the banyan tree.

Seawall area obviously gone.

edit:

Holy shit! It took out the harbor. Pioneer Inn, I'm sure.
And that burned boat hull looks like the Carthaginian. fuuuuuck.
But the tree looks like it could survive.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66457731

[LongShortLong]

All true except Yellowstone.

Yellowstone had its time with fire too. I remember the magazine covers. Orange sky, black forest, ash. Too bad for us humans :'( We'll rebuild. Nature will recover. Sucks today.

[Cono Este]

This is unreal. It was my happy place for me, and so many, for 25 yrs. They will rebuild, but it will never be the same.

[Core Shot]

So sad. Yes Lahaina will be rebuild. In a fake style. Hard to reproduce all that history.

The news is annoying as fuck. Blame the wind. Summer is windy as fuck on Maui. Granted it’s not usually Lahaina. Blame the non native grasses. Wtf. Sugar cane? They burn those fields for centuries. Drought? It’s summer. Although the drought monitor does show extreme areas.

Anyway. So sad to see the devastation of such a chill and historic town. RIP

[Cono Este]

What sucks is so much local housing was destroyed.

It’s going to take some serious master planning, logistics etc. to rebuild. My experience with island politics says maui county will make it a shit show.

Im hoping larry and others, will step up and offer project management, bridge the gap between insurance and cost overruns etc. it’s going to take a miracle to make that it the special it once was.

[smmokan]

Just devastating to watch, it’s like the mass destruction in Superior and Louisville all over again, but with far more casualties. I can’t even imagine going through this while it was happening, or processing the recovery afterwards.

[Cono Este]

I bet that Highway was backed up in both directions. Amazing how the fire can jump it so easily. If you’re down on front street, hard to tell which way to flee, and with the water to my back, hard to imagine you’d be that fucked. Fucking fire burned the boats in the harbour. It looks like Pearl harbour Dec 8th, 1941. Kimos gone, movie theatre gone, all gone.

[Danno]

6 dead in Lahaina

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/08...es-maui-hawaii

up to 36

[AK47bp]

Oh man. 1st world problem I know but seeing death and destruction in a place that has brought you so much joy and memories over many years is gut wrenching. Now the death toll is way higher than I would have thought. I hope all those huge mega hotels in Kaanapali work something out and allow some families to temporarily live there while they rebuild.

[Not DJSapp]

Holy shit! It took out the harbor. Pioneer Inn, I'm sure.

Start the video at 2:38. Pioneer Inn is completely gone. Banyan tree is next to it in the shot to the right. Still standing but it looks charred. Maybe it will survive?

I only visited Lahina once. Cute and quaint, but felt we didn't really stray from front street and it felt very touristy. That tree is magical and I hope it made it though.

[LongShortLong]

Amazing how the fire can jump it so easily.

Agree. I watched a local TV reporter's B roll from one of the Napa fires. The wind blows glowing flaming embers along the ground, and the fire flows right over roads. Mostly leaves in that fire. Licks something flammable on the other side and then it's across. Really cool looking, aside from the destructiveness. Embers in the wind man. Palm fronds spot fire really well, too. Probably also parts of disintegrating houses, lofted by their plastic fueled infernos.

[neufox47]

Jumping a road is nothing. Checkout the vids of the harbor where boats moored hundreds of feet from land caught fire.


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[Meadow Skipper]

Jumping a road is nothing. Checkout the vids of the harbor where boats moored hundreds of feet from land caught fire.

This is the marker for the Maui incident.

[Cono Este]

Jumping a road is nothing. Checkout the vids of the harbor where boats moored hundreds of feet from land caught fire.


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

That part man, wow. That nigh shot looked like the sea was on fire. Man if Im down near the harbour I’d have always felt safe near the water, but not exactly. I bet people flocked to the end of the jetty and still had go in the ocean. I’m sure there are some still missing. Just incredible.

[AK47bp]

The wind just ripped down the mountain toward the sea

https://youtu.be/-e3DVC07L-U

[Cono Este]

Kansas mother-of-three Tee Dang jumped into the Lahaina harbour with her children and husband on Tuesday to flee the flames which tore through the town.

Sitting in traffic in downtown Lahaina, they watched from their rental car as others started to jump in - including a woman who she said appeared to be in her 80s.

But when the vehicles around them began catching fire they decided to grab their food, water, and phones and run for the waves.

With their children - ages five, 13 and 20 - they at first stayed close to shore while the fire razed the town to the ground.

As evening approached and the tide crept in, the water started smashing her into the rock wall of the harbour, severely cutting Dang's leg.

That was when a line of "about 50 cars" on Front Street in Lahaina started exploding, Dang said, forcing them to move into deeper water to seek shelter from the “shooting debris”.

Eventually, a firefighter gathered them from the water and directed them to run through the flames. Her entire family suffered burns from the flames and are now waiting for a flight off the island.

[Norseman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yp2qKwVfvE

[Meadow Skipper]

53 dead.
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/mau...-23/index.html

53. No words.

[Cono Este]

No alert went out. They have a sophisticated alert system for tsunamis etc. best in the world.

Someone fucked up.

I wonder what the timeline looks like.

[AK47bp]

If you watched that video I posted above it sounds like the perfect combination of a hurricane to the south with counterclockwise rotation, a high pressure system to the north with clockwise rotation creating massive winds bombing over and accelerating down the mountain while heating up blasting toward the sea right at Lahaina.

When a flame or spark hits dry grass in 80mph hot wind I can’t imagine there is much time.

[LongShortLong]

The giant smoke cloud and smoky smell is the alert. If you miss that, there's the roar and then the heat and flames. Sophisticated human systems will also try to alert you, wait and you may get crispy.

Boats burn (link to marina fires). Sad but true. Downwind of burning structures and moored next to other boats and docks, they were doomed. Hundreds of feet is normal fire spotting in strong wind, though the fire would have also hopped a couple feet from one boat to the next.

The thing with large destructive fires, is the fire is bigger than us and does as it will. With a windblown fire, even a million firefighters may not stop it, as they can only safely fight from upwind. That also means there's often no firefighters where the fire is, and leads to internet idiots crying about melted cars and conspiracies. Guess what happens when a fire burns freely without a fire hose nearby? Very hot, thorough combustion. Memories meet ashes.

It's truly a terror to be caught by windblown fire. Fires can easily run 10 miles in an afternoon. You gotta flee but it may not be possible to flee or it's too late. A couple dozen downed power poles blocked the highway out of Lahaina (from yesterday's press conference). And in some cases the fires moved faster than the warnings, or destroyed the communication systems. One of the fire guys said they asked tourists to shelter in place at the resorts while evacuating residents, but didn't know how many got the message and did know many tourists tried to flee (as I would).

[AK47bp]

This page has some more info. Few vids of the wind that day and power lines just bouncing up and down. Vid of people in the water etc.

https://reddit.com/r/maui/s/ndN7yztCFt

[Boissal]

No alert went out. They have a sophisticated alert system for tsunamis etc. best in the world.

Someone fucked up.

I wonder what the timeline looks like.

The NWS had a red flag warning for fire conditions in the area, along with spot-on forecasting for the high winds, and that was issued Monday afternoon. Discussion of the conditions here: https://wasatchweatherweenies.blogsp...s-to-maui.html
Not sure what local government/emergency notifications do with that info in terms of warning people, but the conditions were flagged as super sketchy early on.
'

[Danno]

When a flame or spark hits dry grass in 80mph hot wind I can’t imagine there is much time.

Yeah, similar thing experienced in the Marshall fire in Colorado last year. 4 lane roads didn't stop it. A 6 lane expressway didn't stop it. To their credit, the fire officials quickly determined that they couldn't do a damn thing to fight it, all they could do is race through all the communities/subdivisions in its path and get people to evacuate. The fire only stopped when the wind died down, some 1000 homes later.

[seano732]

Fleetwoods gone. Not only was that restaurant amazing, the art gallery had some of the coolest photography I’ve ever seen…. Unreal.