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Lahaina: A Failure of Blue Land Use Policy
The Lahaina inferno has drawn out the conspiracy theorists, touting everything from laser rays to artificial fuels. Add in the Gaea cult assigning it to global warming. The truth is likely even more tragic because prosaic. It’s the foreseeable consequence of readily observable folly, lacking only the right conditions to set things in motion. This photo (cribbed from the AP) tells the tale:
This is a view looking south. The built-up area in the background is Lahaina. The unburnt swath of buildings on the near side – apparently protected by a vacant area – give the direction of the wind driving the fire: out of the east, towards the shore.
It’s the sharp line between the buildings and the blackened area that’s a tell for anyone familiar with land use patterns. That doesn’t occur organically, it’s the result of enforced policy. And sure enough, Maui has a directed growth policy incorporating urban growth boundaries (PDF at link). That’s part one of the puzzle: The buildings are crammed together and the prices are driving out the locals. As in California, the supply is artificially constrained and demand is high due to a benevolent climate, in spite of intrusive and stupid government.
Now about those burnt-over black areas. Who was ignorant enough to grow combustible crops right up to housing? No one. Those aren’t crop areas any more. Once upon a time they were sugar cane plantations. But the sugar cane industry closed down in Maui almost seven years ago, and the Lahaina fields were abandoned even earlier, in the ’90s. Hawaiian cane sugar became non-competitive due to rising land prices (i.e., taxes), increased wages (unions and competition from tourism), and the lowering of sugar tariffs.
In a free market, those fields would have been converted to some more economical use. In spite of talk about cattle ranching or biofuels, nothing has happened. The unmanaged land has been overrun with fast-growing, combustible non-native vegetation – largely grasses that support a flash fire – right up to the edge of the built-up area. What might have become more housing and businesses instead turned into a tinder box.
The town and dead of Lahaina were killed with blue land use policies, not death rays.
Published in Environment
And I have no doubt there was a lot of “what could go wrong?” at those land-use meetings.
WSJ reports that Hawaii’s power company was focusing on so-called “renewables,” instead of routine maintenance of its ageing powerlines, which were seen on the ground sparking, and probably starting the wildfires, after their poles had been toppled by wind.
So irony of ironies: to fight climate change’s threats off in the unknowable future, we must ignore known threats right here and now on the ground.
There are videos of what was going on, including the speed of the wind, for example:
It is hard to be competent. And when attention is deviated to politically-driven idiocies (from LGBTQ+ in our military in Afghanistan) to Green Energy, core competency is reduced. It takes time for people to retire and expertise to be lost, but once it is lost…. hoo, boy.
I think the OP is quite right. Unintended Consequences of land use policies played a role. Unused land ought to be used. A few dozen head of cattle do quite a number on unrestrained grasses.
Unintended Consequences of deviating the power company from its core competency also hurt.
Well, y’see, cattle produce CO2 and methane. Whereas wildfires…. Shut Up!
The time to fight a fire is the year before. Maui has a unreliable water pumping (depends on sketchy power lines). The city did not have a valid evacuation plan (85 people died in California wildfire, because the town had no plan). There was no communication plan. After wildfires, my town focuses on the wildfire boundary. Fires are going to happen, it is not a matter of “when” not “if”. At the boundary, you have to clear out all the fuel to create a fire break between nature and housing. Politicians like the celebrity of attending NetZero conferences instead of the day-to-day of preparation and avoiding problems.
Plus they don’t get kudos for prevention measures if there’s no wildfire, but they ALWAYS get kudos for being “green.”
So…anti-cowfartism caused this, essentially.
I’m not trying for a glib affect here, more an incredulous reaction. Maybe they never considered cattle in the area, but all of this comes from the same type of thinking. It may be different here, depending on the ownership of these former sugar cane plantations.
Okay let’s delve into the Sherlock Holmes realm of logic.
When investigaing a crime, we must notice if the dog barked (or did not bark.)
We who have the horrid experience of dealing with a state-proclaimed drought lasting over a decade have questions.
Apologies in advance if the following seems “conspiracy theorist” but:
here in Calif we had a historic, never to be discovered in prior years through the study of tree rings, 10 or 12 year drought.
Now Point One: over in the high Sierras, ever single year starting in November, whenever a rain or snow storm became possible, the ski resort owners filled the skies with their leased planes.
Those fleets of planes then liberally sprayed the skies in a manner known as cloud seeding.
The result: an amplification of the minor storms into major snow storms. This allows for maximum skiing.
This technology has been around since at least the late 1940’s. When members of the public started asking their elected officials here in Calif about “Why can’t cloud seeding be used to end a drought” the main response was “It causes harm to humans.”
However, again refer to Point One above. If it cloud seeding is such a danger, why is it allowed simply so people of all kinds can trek up to the Sierras and spend time skiing?
Anyway that query about employing cloud seeding was first made in the period of 2000 to 2005.
Additionally it would be noted that there needs to be ample cloud cover for it to work.
This is balderdash. On the morning of the 2nd Saturday of Sept, 2015, there was plenty of heavy duty cloud cover in my area of Lake County Calif. (Not in other areas – but across mine.) Had planes been deployed to cloud seed, with the winds coming from the north, the fire f to the south of me would have been vanquished before it got out of hand.
As it was, it became to date the most destructive fire in Calif in terms of property. Close to 90K acres burned. (The Apr 1906 fires after the San Fran earthquake took 24K lives, so the “Valley fire” with 7 or 8 fatalities didn’t affect too many people.)
Since June 1st 2023 there have been a full 15 days of heavy duty clouds when we could have relief from drought. I imagine the same situation is true of Maui.
Like the dog that would not bark, the planes that will not cloud seed tell me everything I need to know about how dis-interested the HigherUps are in terms of decreasing droughts and thus ending these destructive fires.
I’m so sad you cannot see this, Chris.
The cow fart theorists and the plantations turned-over-to-weed theorists not only are right but they have in their humility not yet got around to explaining that these two methods of increasing Global Climate crises have caused the planet (which we call Gaia) to become smarter. The planet’s latest fire storms are now employed by the rich to do the bidding of the rich!
I guess the cow fart/plantations-converted-to-weeds theorists are too humble to mention the intelligence of this latest wild fire:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1691985186265698413
One thing at a time.
Power companies around the US are far too focused on renewable energy at the expense of maintaining their current infrastructure.
Goats are very effective at removing undesirable combustible plant growth.
By the way wind turbines have some fire danger issues.
The Hawaiian weather is extremely predictable, which is why the islands are resorts. On Maui, the wet side is the Hana Coast, where they grow house plants as big as houses. The north shore gets the waves, that’s where the surfers hang out. The west, where Lahaina and the big resorts are located, is the dry side. They are there because it’s dry, sunbathers don’t like cloud cover, and they wouldn’t thank you for trying to change it. Of course things can go to extremes, as this year, and then a hurricane blows by to the south, and…
And Carol, the planes orbiting in your sky are there because the airmen from Travis have to log their flight hours to keep their ratings, not because they are seeding clouds or spreading chemtrails.
It’s worth looking into. But even if they wanted to do something sensible, like put some cattle there or even keep the grasses down by regular cutting, they may have been stymied by the same land use policies.
Whatever board was in charge of it held up a plan $190 million dollar plan to clear vegetation around powerlines with no action for four years. They discussed it again recently, so there’s that.
I don’t know if anyone petitioned for re-zoning or if the land changed hands, but if there was action to be taken, it’s not unreasonable to assume government dereliction in the matter.
most of California is a desert. there is snow in the mountains because of the elevation causing air to cool and precipitate. The physics does not care about dogs barking.
All I gots to say is the evidence for conspiracy is better than the evidence for global warming killing those people.
Comment removed per suggestion of On Locke
With apologies to On Locke and to Doug Watt
How does a city that sits right next to the ocean not have water to extinguish fires?
When it doesn’t have salt water pumps, or the power to run them.
To the extent there were disaster preps made, they appear to have addressed the last disaster: tsunami. E.g., the training response to the warning sirens, if they had been sounded, was to run inland, IOW, straight into the fire in this case.
Carol, what does PG&E have to do with Lahaina? Maybe you could make your own post on the topic, instead of hijacking this one.
I read of the water district/utility department being slow to approve more water releases from the reservoirs. I’d be curious to know if there system of firew hydrants were off that fresh water reservoir or is there was a salt water w/ diesel pump options? Seems like an easy process to pressurize the system of hydrants with sea water (flush it with fresh water later to prevent corrosion). It’s frustrating to view this loss of life and destruction while seeing it right on the ocean.
Can you cite a source for the misspending?
Added: On second thought, explain put that in a post?
From what I’ve read, there was no reservoir as such. The local fresh water source was a combination of pumped wells from aquifers, and some drawn from fresh water streams. The streams were depleted due to the drought that was part of the disaster cause, and there are reports (I haven’t seen confirmation) that a local water official wouldn’t allow their use anyway. The whole matter became moot when the power source for pumping disappeared when the distribution lines were either blown down (see video above) or burned. I haven’t seen anything about diesel generators or pumps.
So it’s the classic failure to observe the 6 P’s…
Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance
Or, people preserving personal property pay price.
Link?
You know what I can’t get over? First let me tell you how pleased I am with memes that say ‘Conspiracy theories are just spoilers,” and the like.
What I can’t get past in the “this is just a normal thing” thinking, is that the WEF had the chutzpah to say that Maui was going to be the first smart-technology island in the world, and then a few months ago the government of Maui stated that Maui was going to be rebuilt with a green, no-fossil-fuels infrastructure. And then a couple of months later a freak fire destroys the entire historic town from people who would not sell to high-rise condo developers. (And the mayor — or is it the governor — says he’ll use eminent domain to take dozens of acres to build a Maui memorial to those lost in Lahaina, either as an open space or for high-density housing — like high-rise condos.)
I wonder how the EVs did during the fire?
The demographics of skiers are very different than that of urban homeless and street gangs.