A year after Maui’s deadly fires, the hills are still filled with flammable grass

There’s heavy machinery — a large mower and excavator — parked in Gordon Firestein’s neighborhood, just south of Lahaina. To him, they’re symbols of hope.

“This is very new,” he says looking at it with a smile. “And we’re seeing examples of this all over the neighborhood.”

The equipment is clearing vegetation around a few houses, cutting the tall grasses that cover the hillsides around Lahaina. The invasive grasses dry to a crisp in the summer, becoming the highly flammable fuel that burned one year ago in a fire that destroyed more than 2,000 buildings and took 102 lives.

As a result of the tragedy, Firestein’s neighborhood has adopted tough new rules for homeowners, requiring them to trim flammable vegetation to create a buffer zone, or so-called defensible space, around homes.

“More people are convinced it’s worth it, if you want to have a house to come back to, if you don't want to have to be afraid for your life,” he says.

After the deadliest fire in modern American history, Maui’s government is taking similar steps. Fire officials are drafting new rules for large landowners on clearing vegetation around buildings. A new law will impose tougher financial penalties on those who don’t comply. The fire department is also adding new staff.

Still, fire experts say Maui has a long way to go to reduce its wildfire risk, especially in adopting policies that other fire-prone states like California have. Of 50 recommendations made in a post-fire report from a Hawaii legislative working group, only a handful have been implemented so far.

“We need major investments and top-down support and it needs to be prioritized,” says Elizabeth Pickett, co-executive director of the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, a non-profit that works on fire policy. “Because we’ve heard for years that we just don’t have the money for that, but this is about shifting around priorities to save lives and to protect our people and places.”

While new wildfire policies can reduce the chances of seeing similar disasters, many in the community are calling for a bigger transformation of Lahaina’s open space. The widespread invasive grasses are the result of large-scale sugarcane farming, which lasted more than a century. As sugar companies pulled out, flammable plants moved in.

Using the land for other purposes could make it less likely to burn, like bringing back farming for traditional Hawaiian crops or using grazing. A lush canopy of native forest could also be restored, an ecosystem that once stretched across West Maui from the mountains to the ocean.

“If we can bring that rainforest back, we can attract more moisture,” says Kainoa Pestana, conservation manager at Pu'u Kukui Watershed , a non-profit that does land restoration. “I think this is a huge opportunity if we all get together. We want to do this to save Lahaina, create a forest and bring Lahaina back to what it used to be.”

A neighborhood wakeup call

One year after the fire, the dark burn scar in Lahaina is difficult to see. It’s covered by golden-brown grasses and shrubs, which grow quickly during the rainy season before drying out in the summer. The view is a reminder of the fire danger that still persists in West Maui on the landscape.

The risks were well-known even before last August, especially to Firestein. Years ago, he joined with a few neighbors to create a FireWise community . The national program, run by the non-profit National Fire Protection Association, gives communities a toolkit to help reduce their fire risk, including how to make houses more fire-resistant. Some neighbors were interested, others not so much.

Firestein says the conversation has changed dramatically since last August. As high winds pushed the fire towards their neighborhood, he and his neighbors were evacuated. Their homes were spared, but the heart of downtown Lahaina was destroyed. Many of those who perished were trying to escape the flames. The loss of life took a heavy toll in a close-knit community.

“What happened in Lahaina has made us way more sensitive to the issues of evacuation than we were beforehand,” Firestein says. “So it’s a high priority for us to deal with the vegetation, especially near the roads.”

As a result, the neighborhood homeowners association passed new rules that require cutting back flammable vegetation near houses, especially overhanging branches or invasive shrubs, like the haole koa. The plant was originally brought to the island for cattle feed, but spreads prolifically and is covered in dry, six-inch seed pods that become flaming embers in high winds.

Despite the new awareness, Firestein says it took several attempts to pass the rules. Some neighbors were concerned about the additional landscaping costs.

“Then there’s just the typical denial: ‘What are the chances? You know, what happened in Lahaina was a one-off’,” he says.

Firestein says they're also working on cutting back larger sections of vegetation, creating buffers that surround the neighborhood, known as fuel breaks. That space can slow the advance of fire on the ground and give firefighters more room to make an attack. The neighborhood was awarded a $300,000 federal grant to do the work, which must be matched by local funds.

Still, these efforts apply to just one neighborhood on Maui, an example of where local volunteers have spearheaded change. At the edges of the neighborhood, large stretches of open space are still covered in a sea of dry grass.

“I don’t understand,” Firestein says. “Property owners of these large parcels — 20 acres, 50 acres — as far as I can see are doing nothing to reduce the vegetation.”

Maui crafting new wildfire rules

At Maui’s fire department, fire chief Brad Ventura says those large unmanaged landscapes are a priority. Maui regularly sees brush fires break out, especially as droughts get more intense in a hotter climate.

The department is currently writing new rules for large landowners, requiring them to clear flammable brush within 30 to 100 feet of structures. The more flammable the vegetation, the larger the radius will be. Ventura says they’re working on striking a balance with the rules.

“We cannot expect somebody who owns 1,000 acres to keep everything four inches short throughout the whole year,” Ventura says. “So we have to make it where it’s safer than it's ever been, but reasonable at the same time.”

A new law will also increase the penalty for landowners who don’t comply. Before, violations cost a one-time fee of $500. Now, fines can be up to $2,500 per day. The fire department has also been given the budget to add three new positions for fire inspectors that will help enforce vegetation rules, as well as an additional public education position.

Still, Maui’s fire inspectors have wide-ranging jobs, responsible for certifying fire sprinklers in buildings and other aspects of the fire code. Currently, inspections of vegetation only occur in response to a complaint from someone in the community. Other states like California have hired dedicated staff to proactively inspect vegetation ahead of fire season, though many properties still don’t get inspections .

Ventura also says they don’t foresee requiring homeowners on residential lots to cut vegetation in their yards, since some live in denser neighborhoods. States like California and local jurisdictions in many Western states have mandated defensible space rules, requiring homeowners to trim hazardous plants to reduce fire danger.

“It's hard to say, to be honest with you, if we’re ever going to be that strict in the state of Hawaii due to the size,” he says. “We have 4,000 square foot lots. You don’t have defensible space on that.”

Only a few policies adopted

Creating new defensible space rules, including the clearing of vegetation within 5 feet of structures, is a recommendation from Maui fire department’s own post-fire analysis report . Defensible space rules with proactive inspections is also one of the key recommendations for making Maui safer according to an analysis by a state legislative working group.

That report identified 50 items to reduce wildfire risk, including adopting building codes that make houses more resistant to burning, as well as creating incentive programs for landowners to manage their vegetation. It also recommended increasing taxes on lands that are not being used for public good or conservation, which could discourage land-banking where investors hold large properties for future development.

So far, state legislators have only implemented a handful of those recommendations , saying other policies need more time to develop. Hawaii is catching up to other states that have spent decades responding to destructive wildfires.

“What we have now are a bunch of community groups and underfunded agencies who are dealing with this on the ground with inadequate resources,” Pickett says. “We need the policies that support that and we need funding support to make sure all the people trying to reduce risk and manage fuels have the resources to pull all of that off.”

Rethinking how land is used

Still, creating fuel breaks and defensible space can only go so far in Maui, where high winds are common. Most wildfires are spread by embers, small bits of burning debris that are carried by the wind. They can land miles from the wildfire itself, fueling its rapid growth.

Fire experts say to substantially reduce the risk of extreme fires, West Maui’s large swaths of open land need to be transformed.

“Doing anything with it is better than letting it sit there and grow fire risk,” Pickett says. “You can manage fuels, but because of the rate of growth of our grasses here, the maintenance requirements are really costly and it takes a lot to keep up with it. So what we’d really like to see are more sustainable solutions.”

That could mean restoring agriculture, including traditional Native Hawaiian practices. As the historic capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, Lahaina was known for its groves of ulu, or breadfruit, trees. Natural underground springs fed lush crops and fish ponds.

It could also mean restoring the native forest that once covered West Maui, before it was cleared by the sugarcane and pineapple industries. Just north of Lahaina, there are pockets of restoration already happening.

A native Hawaiian forest grows

“So this is the early stages of what we want it to look like,” says Pestana of Pu’u Kukui Watershed, standing next to a young koa tree that’s three feet tall. “These trees are known to grow 100 feet tall, 500 years old.”

About 26 acres of native Hawaiian plants are growing on a former pineapple field, still owned by Maui Land and Pineapple Company. After pineapple production ended 15 years ago, invasive grasses moved in. Pestana and his restoration team have been working to clear it out, planting native species instead. ʻAʻaliʻi are already growing, a native shrub with clusters of pink flowers. The koa trees will eventually create a broad canopy, restoring habitat that native birds and insects need to survive.

This kind of forest once stretched from the high mountains all the way to the ocean, before it was cut down for agriculture. Pestana says the restoration is being done with seeds from the pockets of forest that still remain at higher elevation.

“When we look at this field, we see the genealogy,” he says. “Those plants that we call the kapuna plants, or the grandparent plants, this is their family coming down.”

While native Hawaiian forest can still burn in wildfires, the ecosystems are less flammable than dry grasslands.

“There’s just a lot of moisture in the tree itself, underneath, in the shade, in the earth,” Pestana says. “I think fire would have a harder time burning its way quickly through there.”

Pestana says restoring the land could be part of the community’s healing process, after having gone through so much.

“ʻĀina is land in Hawaiian,” Pestana says. “It’s the thing that really does feed us, physically and spiritually. You know, ʻāina heals. Rehabilitation of land rehabilitates people.”

One of the largest landowners in Lahaina, Kamehameha Schools, just announced that it intends to restore more than 1,000 acres , bringing back native forest and traditional fruit trees, as well as housing and community facilities. The plans are still in development, which it says will be done with community input.

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