2023-08-12 16:57:00
At least 80 people have died in the fires that have ravaged the island of Maui, Hawaii, a heavy toll that has earned authorities a shower of criticism over their handling of one of the worst natural disasters in recent history. American Archipelago.
The residents, still in shock, are just beginning to see the extent of the damage in Lahaina, almost reduced to nothing by the force of the blaze.
“It took everything, everything! It breaks my heart,” laments Anthony Garcia, 80, who had taken up residence in the city some thirty years ago. Around, the survivors stir the ashes in the hope of finding photos or objects.
Of the shops, hotels, buildings and restaurants that made the charm of this seaside town of 13,000 inhabitants, there is almost nothing left. A majestic banyan tree, a tourist attraction, was licked by the flames but seems to have survived. It stands, now solitary amidst the ruins.
During this nightmare, the locals could only count on the “coconut network” – word of mouth -, denounces to AFP a resident, William Harry.
In this landscape of desolation, the residents seek to understand how the drama could take on such proportions. Justice too: an investigation has been opened into the management of the crisis by the authorities.
Maui suffered numerous power outages during the crisis and the 911 emergency number stopped working in parts of the island, while fire alarm sirens were not activated.
The alerts, usually transmitted by telephone, could not be received because “there was no network” and “clearly, we did not provide backup solutions to ensure the safety of the inhabitants”, admitted Saturday Jill Tokuda, elected Democrat of Hawaii, on the CNN channel.
“We underestimated the dangerousness and the speed of the fire,” she regretted. “We have to improve.”
With 80 deaths, the toll from these fires, which started earlier this week, exceeds that of the 1960 tsunami, which killed 61 people on the island of Hawaii.
And the archipelago has probably not finished counting its dead. Search and rescue teams, accompanied by dogs, arrived on Maui to search for possible bodies, according to the county.
$5.52 billion
Firefighters had to battle multiple simultaneous fires fueled by high winds, themselves fueled by the force of Hurricane Dora.
Faced with the speed of the progression of the flames, the survivors of Lahaina had to flee without looking back, sometimes even throwing themselves into the ocean to escape the blaze. The fire was “as intense as hell”, says Ekolu Brayden Hoapili, moved to have had to “leave a lot of people behind” him.
Some 2,207 buildings, mostly residential, were destroyed or damaged, according to the federal agency responsible for responding to natural disasters (Fema).
For the Lahaina fire alone, the cost of reconstruction is estimated at $5.52 billion.
These devastating fires come in the middle of a summer marked by a series of extreme weather events all over the planet, including an intense heat wave in the southern United States, phenomena linked to global warming according to experts.
They have spread all the more easily since Maui has had less rain this year than usual. The western part of the island, where Lahaina is located, is currently experiencing “severe” to “moderate” drought, according to the US Drought Monitor.
08/12/2023 16:55:07 – Lahaina (United States) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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