August 15, 2023
"'It just started getting so black,' he told me. He knocked on his neighbor’s door, saying, 'We’ve got to go!'"
"But his neighbor had cats and didn’t want to leave. 'He just shut the door in my face,' [a herbalist called Spice Prince] recalled. Over the phone, I could hear him start to sob.
'I ran with my dog in my backpack, in my shorts and flip-flops,' Prince told me. The world was an inferno. 'It wasn’t like a flame—it was just, like, dragon-breath orange.' He walked up a mountain road in the night, leaving behind all of his herbs, plants, elixirs, surfboards, and a collection of vintage hunting bows. 'I’ve gathered medicines since I was six years old—I’ve lost it all,' he said. 'It’s like I’m coming out of the womb, starting my life over with nothing.'"
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28 comments:
Climate change blamed.....what else could it be?
Unless you've been in one, it really is almost impossible to understand a fire like this. It is beyond conception or imagination, and moves so much faster than most people imagine. For places that aren't very prepared for fire safety at every level (including home construction and property) it can go to absolute hell very fast. And once the fire picks up, it makes it's own wind and storms and hell.
In high school I lived where a major fire was coming down the hill across the street. Outside there were 50ft palm trees on fire, like giant torches, and embers were flying vertical. Hosing off the roof helped, but there were burnt patches, a rose bush burned down, and house even a mile away got hit by embers and burned down. And our house was very fire safe.
This loss feels like a sort of 9/11. It wasn't Islamic terror.. it was natures rage.
It was a wind driven event. Similar to other major fires of late.
Is there any reason this couldn't happen in a densely populated suburb if the conditions were right?
There's a lot of flammable material and if you've got 50+ mph winds, it would spread easily.
At least some people had the ocean they could flee to.
"Climate change blamed.....what else could it be?"
The Antiplanner has some thoughts on that...
Land-Use Law Kills Nearly 100 People in Maui
https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=21268
Why did they shut the water off??
https://twitchy.com/justmindy/2023/08/15/strange-happenings-in-maui-n2386314
I know three people who are missing.
A perfect climate of alien grasses, catastrophic convection, and anthropogenic negligence.
I object to articles like this, written by someone far away from the disaster.
I just picture the "journalist" rubbing their hands in glee because there is something to write about.
I lived along the foothills in San Bernardino for 26 years and the fires, starting with the 1980 Panorama Fire, were terrifying. Friends lost homes, my office at the time burned and my wife and we almost lost our home shortly before we left California. We evacuated across the valley and watched the wind-driven flames consume the hillsides - wondering the whole time if we would have a home to return to.
I ache for those affected by the Maui fires. Little warning and really no place to hide while they were pushed into the sea.
Unfortunately, it’s become human nature to seek a villain to blame, but right now these people need compassion and assistance.
Is there any reason this couldn't happen in a densely populated suburb if the conditions were right?
It already did. The Marshall Fire in CO, December 2021. As with Maui, a grass fire and high winds.
"'It just started getting so black,' he told me. He knocked on his neighbor’s door, saying, 'We’ve got to go!'"
That could be easily misinterpreted, please be more pc.
Sometimes nothing can be done.
But as in Paradise, the one or two roads out of town immediately got clogged. It's better to live in places with many outs.
Chest, yes, wind driven embers destroyed a large suburban development in California a few years ago. When the wind is piling burning embers against the side of your house, that Class-A fireproof roof can't save you. Pictures later looked like Tokyo after the firebombings.
Wendy - don't believe everything you read on the interwez.
Lahaina is a death zone... filled with dead bodies and toxic, still burning, materials.
it is not safe to walk around. They are still looking for the dead. burned beyond recognition bodies. Authorities need DNA samples from relatives to make matches because there isn't much left.
While frustrating, they are asking for patience.
It is not safe to allow people back in. It's not a conspiracy.
But his neighbor had cats and didn’t want to leave. 'He just shut the door in my face,'
That was a lesson learned from Hurricane Katrina. People refused rescue because the rescuers had orders not to take pets. People who could have been saved died trying to save their pets instead.
This man, an amazing Pacific Rim artist and local to Maui, just went on the missing list... along with his lovely and kind wife, Kathy.
Their brother Paul is also missing.
I do not see their daughter Lisa on the list. I can only imagine her grief.
The ocean did save some lives. I've heard that a few people died after being in the water over 8 hours. The smoke was choking...
JRoberts said...
"I ache for those affected by the Maui fires. "
yes. I feel the same. I cannot climb out of the hole.
Wendy - the water is shut off because all the pipes are melted.
Oakland firestorm of October 1991. 3,469 homes and apartment units burned.
Berkeley Fire of September 17, 1923. 640 buildings. It would have burned to the bay, but the wind shifted and they were able to stop it. Fire is nothing new in California.
I thought from the headline that it was going to be about northern cities in the 60’s…..
JSM
How did it start? I only heard there was an explosion at a gas station?
Unbelievable how paradise- even paradise- can become devastated.
I’m really so sorry for the missing &the lost
And their grieving folks that are left behind.
How did it start? IDK for sure but the claim that it started from sparking electrical wires that were downed by the high winds makes sense.
Horror upon horror, these tinder-like conditions have been known and warned about for years, by many different parties and experts, to little response from those in power. Somehow---somehow---we have a society now where Government doesn't seem to be able to do jack shit to perform that actual functions for which it was constituted. They swan about, naming things after themselves and showing passion and efficacy only when they are devising new ways to torment the rest of us with utopian projects.
rastajenk said...
Climate change blamed.....what else could it be?
^^
Ah, yes......The Fallacy of Ignorance rears its ugly head.
Already, local pols are using it to disguise and excuse their own ineptitudes.
I feel terribly for those survivors and deceased. Seems like a tornado with very little advance notice. But this fire didn’t dissipate. 🙏🙏
"Already, local pols are using it to disguise and excuse their own ineptitudes."
Don't know why they're worried. They're pretty much all Democrats, what are the locals going to do? Vote Republican?
Horrifying. Burning to death must be one of the absolutely worst ways to go.
My wife and I were on the islands last January including the burn area. One of the group noted the area used to be fields of pineapples. But then it wan a barren, grassy hillside. Global warming my ass.
A great, and appropriate outpouring of sympathy (well minus the Presbo).
But I recall the cities burning during the Floyd riots. People lost their homes and businesses. Where are the soulless bastards on the left saying things like BFD they have insurance, for most people it's just stuff.
Come on folks have a little consistency in your callousness.
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