Humans figured out how to prevent huge fires in urban areas over a century ago. Why have they gotten so bad again?
And the Lahaina fire shows that they can burn in places where nobody expects a catastrophic wildfire: a modern town on a tropical island in the middle of the Pacific, whose ecosystems only rarely saw wildfire in prehistory.
It’s not the only recent example of fires ravaging surprising places. In 2021, a freak wildfire ignited in late December—outside of typical fire season—in Boulder, Colorado, burning more than 1,000 buildings. In 2016, the Tubbs Fire ripped through Santa Rosa, California, and its surrounding communities, destroying 5,600 structures and killing 22 people. “Those aren’t fire areas—they’re just the,” says Thomas Cova, who studies wildfire evacuations at the University of Utah.
On Maui, as with wildfires all over the world, there isn’t just one factor contributing to the blaze. Overall, : A warmer atmosphere can absorb more moisture from the landscape. Climate change is also making droughts more frequent, longer, and more severe, so there’s less moisture to wet the landscape in the first place.across Lahaina—and all it takes is a single spark to ignite a fast-moving blaze. “There’s no firefighting capabilities for structure-to-structure urban fire in winds like that,” says Cova.
These winds across Maui were dry as well, helping to suck the remaining moisture out of vegetation to turn it into fuel. That fuel seems to have been invasive grasses that European colonizers brought when they established plantations. When rains are plentiful, these plants grow like mad, then easily dry out once the rain stops.
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