Awakened by howling winds that tore through his Maui neighborhood, Shane Treu went out at dawn and saw a wooden power pole suddenly snap with a flash, its sparking, popping line falling to the dry grass below and quickly igniting a row of flames.
He called 911 and then turned on Facebook video to livestream his attempt to fight the blaze in Lahaina, including wetting down his property with a garden hose.
“I heard ‘buzz, buzz,’” the 49-year-old resort worker recounted to The Associated Press. “It was almost like somebody lit a firework. It just ran straight up the hill to a bigger pile of grass and then, with that high wind, that fire was blazing.”
Treu’s video and others captured the early moments of what would become the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. Now the footage has emerged as key evidence pointing to fallen utility lines as the possible cause. Hawaiian Electric Co. faces criticism for not shutting off the power amid high wind warnings and keeping it on even as dozens of poles began to topple.
A class-action lawsuit has already been filed seeking to hold the company responsible for the deaths of more than 100 people. The suit cites the utility’s own documents showing it was aware that preemptive power shutoffs such as those used in California were an effective strategy to prevent wildfires but never adopted them.
“Nobody likes to turn the power off — it’s inconvenient — 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,” said Michael Wara, a wildfire expert who is director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University. “In this case, the utility did not.”
“It may turn out that there are other causes of this fire, and the utility lines are not the main cause,” Wara said. “But if they are, boy, this didn’t need to happen.”
Hawaiian Electric declined to comment on the accusations in the lawsuit or whether it has ever shut down power before due to high winds. But President and CEO Shelee Kimura noted at a news conference Monday that many factors go into that decision, including the possible effect on people who rely on specialized medical equipment and firefighters who need power to pump water.
Videos put scrutiny on downed power lines as possible cause of deadly Maui wildfires (aol.com)