State and Local Government's Aren't Ready for Climate Change

As President Biden heads to Maui to view the wildfire devastation  that all but obliterated the small city of Lahaina, the Sunday quarterbacking is in high gear and like so many other areas that have suffered the catastrophic results of climate change some things are becoming clear:  there was too little emergency planning, communication systems were too vulnerable, power companies ignored known dangers, inadequate escape routes, and a lack of funding for emergency management and firefighting cost scores of lives.  This is not to beat up on Hawaii or Maui in particular.  The same problems exist across the nation - Hurricane Hilary will likely lay bare deficiencies in California - including my home area of Southeast Virginia which always faces the threat of hurricanes which is being made worse by rising sea levels and warming ocean temperature.  When the next significant hurricane hits Hampton Roads - and there will be one, the only question of when it will occur - the same kind of after the fact analysis will doubtlessly reveal major short comings.  Sadly, state legislatures are more willing to give tax breaks and incentives to businesses than they are in funding emergency programs to protect the lives of their citizens.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the disaster in Maui.  Here are excerpts:

It was the firestorm that wildfire experts and residents on Maui had warned about for years — a blaze fueled by hurricane winds roaring through untamed grasses and into a 13,000-person coastal town with few ways in or out. Local officials had released plan after plan acknowledging that wildfire was all but certain.

But when the nightmare fire erupted across Lahaina on Aug. 8, killing at least 114 people and possibly scores more, systems that had been put in place to sound the alarm and bring people to safety collapsed, residents and experts said.

Cellphone sites were burned and lost power, leaving people unable to communicate or receive emergency alerts. Two main roads providing escape routes out of town were closed because of flames and downed power lines, funneling evacuees into an inferno of gridlock along a coastal road where many burned inside their cars. Powerful emergency sirens never made a sound. Fire hoses almost ran dry.

And while fire departments and wildfire-preparedness groups have long urged people in fire-prone areas like West Maui to be ready and leave early, other advice from the authorities was far less concrete. The state of Hawaii’s own guide for how people should respond to hurricanes, tsunamis and other disasters does not include any direction on what to do in a wildfire.

[T]he initial shock and grief are giving way to anger and questions about the government’s planning and response, most significantly why communications around Lahaina failed so badly, and whether earlier, more aggressive evacuation measures could have prevented some of the deaths.

Half of all addresses in the contiguous United States face some wildfire risk, meaning that tens of millions of lives may be vulnerable to some of the same failures that engulfed Lahaina: A lack of early evacuations and unpracticed escape plans. Communications networks crippled by flames, power outages and fire-spewing winds. Limited evacuation routes that clog with people fleeing when it is already too late.

Hawaii’s attorney general has ordered an outside investigation into the response by county and state officials; Maui County’s mayor, Richard T. Bissen Jr., has faced persistent questions from residents and the news media about the county’s response . . . .

Elizabeth Pickett, co-executive director of the nonprofit Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, cautioned against blaming the devastation in Lahaina solely on emergency-management decisions in the middle of a firestorm.

“I hear, ‘Emergency management bungled the response, alarms should have gone off,’” she said. “All these things — they’re pieces. But it’s not telling the whole story of how it got so bad.”

She said Hawaii’s wildfire risk has been growing after years of underinvestment in fire departments and fire prevention. She said that there were not enough access roads for firefighters or evacuation routes in subdivisions, and that landowners were not forced to manage the invasive grasses that become tinder for fires.  . . . . “There’s barely enough resources at the Fire Department to do code enforcement,” Ms. Pickett said. “No one with power has heard us.”

Inside the disaster zone that is central Lahaina lies what some call the grim result of failing to address wildfire danger: a panorama of destruction beginning at the hillsides and cutting through neighborhoods and business districts right up to the ocean and beyond. Floating in the harbor are burned boats bobbing in the sea. Rebuilding is expected to cost more than $5 billion.

The fire caused a “catastrophic communications failure” as it burned through neighborhoods and downtown later that afternoon, State Senator Angus McKelvey said.

Fiber optic cables melted in the intense heat, he said, leaving people unable to let others know about the fire, call for help or receive emergency alerts from the county.

“Nobody could communicate with anybody on any level,” Mr. McKelvey, a Democrat, said.

Before he stepped down as director of Maui’s emergency management agency, Herman Andaya defended his decision not to sound the sirens, saying at a news conference that people might have thought that there was a tsunami and run inland into the fires.

Before the inferno consumed Lahaina, the deadliest wildfire in America in more than a century was the Camp fire, which devastated the Northern California town of Paradise. Five years later, Paradise is installing a siren system, at the urging of residents.

In California, regulators now require wireless carriers to have backup power sources for their cell towers in areas at high risk for wildfires, a measure imposed after residents did not receive emergency alerts during several devastating fires in recent years, including the Camp fire.

In fire-prone Australia, after the Black Saturday bush fires of 2009 that killed 173 people and incinerated entire towns, the government expanded its warning system and aimed to move faster in telling people to evacuate.

But many fire officials in Australia warn that the scale and intensity of today’s biggest fires require new expectations.

“People have this idea that someone will protect me,” said Greg Mullins, who spent 50 years in fire management in Australia, “but we know with climate change, on the worst days, no force on Earth can beat Mother Nature.”