Videos might show start of the Maui wildfire: Engulfed ‘in a matter of minutes’
Dramatic, newly released videos show the moment a downed power line in Maui may have played a part in sparking the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century.
Shane Treu, 49, filmed flames coming from a wooden power pole that snapped under high winds early Aug. 8 — just hours before the wildfire that has killed more than 100 people was confirmed as taking hold in now-devastated Lahaina.
“I heard ‘buzz, buzz’ … It was almost like somebody lit a firework,” the resort worker recalled of the live line sizzling and popping on dry grass outside his home.
“It just ran straight up the hill to a bigger pile of grass and then, with that high wind, that fire was blazing,” he said.
“In a matter of minutes, that whole place was just engulfed.”
Treu filmed three Facebook Live videos from about 6:40 a.m., starting with him trying to battle the blaze with a hose and then warning arriving emergency services about the live power line in the road.
His neighbor, Robert Arconado, also filmed a lone firefighter headed toward the flames as they continued to spread west downhill and downwind toward the center of town.
More than two hours later, at 9 a.m., Maui officials declared the fire “100% contained” and the firefighters left.
But Arconado said the exact same area reignited — with a video he filmed just after 3 p.m. showing smoke and embers being carried toward town as howling winds continued to lash the island.
He continued to film for hours, capturing distressing, apocalyptic scenes of people jumping into the ocean to escape the towering pillars of flames.
“It was scary, so scary,” Arconado said. “There was nowhere to go. … I witnessed every single thing. I never go to sleep.”
Both men’s homes were spared — but satellite imagery shows that starting about 500 yards downwind, where they saw the flames heading, whole neighborhoods were reduced to ash.
The footage could prove to be key evidence pointing to fallen utility lines as the possible cause of the wildfire, which left thousands of people unaccounted for and destroyed over 2,200 structures.
In the days after the initial blaze, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Hawaiian Electric Co., accusing it of failing to turn off the area’s power despite high wind warnings and a number of toppling poles.
“There is credible evidence, captured on video, that at least one of the power line ignition sources occurred when trees fell into a Hawaiian Electric power line,” Mikal Watts, one of the lawyers behind the suit, said of Treu’s footage.
Old power lines were supposed to be replaced in 2019 and this year, but the company pushed back the work, he alleged.
“Nobody likes to turn the power off — it’s inconvenient,” said Michael Wara, a wildfire expert who is director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University.
“But any utility that has significant wildfire risk, especially wind-driven wildfire risk, needs to do it and needs to have a plan in place,” he said.
“In this case, [Hawaiian Electric Co.] did not.
“It may turn out that there are other causes of this fire, and the utility lines are not the main cause. But if they are, boy, this didn’t need to happen.”
Hawaiian Electric president and CEO Shelee Kimura deflected criticism at a Monday news conference, saying that the company also had to consider those who rely on specialized medical equipment and firefighters’ need to pump water.
“Even in places where this has been used, it is controversial, and it’s not universally accepted,” she said of the power cut strategy.
Maui Police Chief John Pelletier was also openly frustrated with the dueling pushback to the lack of power cuts and complaints that too many people were still unaccounted for due to a lack of cell service.
“Do you want notifications or do you want the power shut off? You don’t get it both ways,” he said.
Whisker Labs, which collects and analyzes electrical grid data, said 70 sensors throughout Maui showed an alarmingly high number of sparking power lines throughout the night of Aug. 8 and into the next morning.
The censors registered dozens of record breaks in transmission in areas where fires likely started and around the times they are believed to have begun.
“A substantial amount of energy was discharged,” Whisker Labs CEO Robert Marshall said.
“Any one of these faults could have caused a wildfire, any could have been an ignition source.”
Shares in the electric company fell by 60 percent over the last week amid fear that it may have to pay out major damages similar to Pacific Gas & Electric’s $13.5 billion compensation for Camp Fire victims.
“[Hawaiian Electric] is why the town of Lahaina is decimated, thousands are now homeless and hundreds will mourn the loss of their innocent loved ones,” lawyer Watts insisted.
“This is an unprecedented tragedy that was an entirely preventable tragedy.”
With Post wires
