Deadly Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Wildfires

"They were moving fast. The winds were vicious and kept changing. He [Charles] said they were inside a dark smoke [that] felt like a tornado and they could not see nothing,"

"They kept calling each other’s name."
"He was screaming ‘run, run, run, Carole run.’ He eventually could not hear her anymore."

Gardner Hartley, Facebook post

 

"Indo-Pacom is on a hair trigger to be able to support as necessary. Everyone fully understands the pain that people are experiencing right now."

"We want to do everything we can help. But we also don’t want to contribute to the problem by sending unnecessary capabilities that then will hinder any type of emergency response."

Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder

 

"The remains we're finding is through a fire that melted metal... When we pick up the remains ... they fall apart."  

"[Cadaver dogs still had a vast area to search for what could still be hundreds of people who are unaccounted for]."

"We're going as fast as we can. But just so you know, 3% — that's what's been searched with the dogs."

Maui Police Chief John Pelletier

 

"The mountain behind us caught on fire and nobody told us jack."

"You know when we found that there was a fire? When it was across the street from us."

Vilma Reed, 63, Maui resident

 

"I will tell you this, as a physician, it is a harrowing sight in Maui."

"When those providers, the police and this division, do come across scenes in houses or businesses it is very difficult for them because they know, ultimately, they will be sharing with our people that there have been more fatalities."

"I do expect the numbers to rise." 

Governor Josh Green

A group of volunteers who sailed from Maalaea Bay, Maui, form an assembly line on Kaanapali Beach on Saturday, Aug. 12, 2023, to unload donations from a boat. Maui residents have come together to donate water, food and other essential supplies to people on the western side of the island after a deadly fire destroyed hundreds of homes and left scores of people homeless. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

One of the most popular tourism resorts in the United States, Hawaii is undergoing a horrific wildfire emergency. Wildfires on Maui have killed 96 people so far and more lethal casualties are expected before this dreadful natural disaster is over. To the present, 2,700 structures have been destroyed by the wildfires that moved at astonishing speed to demolish everything in their path. Countless people have been left homeless, leaving social assistance authorities with a huge task of providing immediate relief to grief-stricken people.

The historic town of Maui is no more, completely destroyed. Disaster relief springs into action. And the hope is that the relief will be more effective than the largest integrated outdoor all-hazard public safety warning system in the world, that Hawaii has been so proud of. There are about 400 sirens positioned across the island chain; their purpose, to alert people to natural disasters and any other threats that could conceivably arise. What could go wrong?

Survivors reveal there was no sound of sirens, nor did they receive any kind of warning, giving them time to prepare. Hawaii's emergency management records indicate no warning sirens had sounded before people were forced to run for their lives. People realized the extreme danger they suddenly faced only when they actually saw flames or heard the explosions that erupted nearby in the state's deadliest natural disaster since 61 people died in a 1960 tsunami.

That territory-wide emergency system was developed as a result of a 1946 tsunami that marked the death of over 150 people on the Big Island. The system sirens are regularly sounded to test their readiness. And when they should have been sounded it seems that no one in authority actually thought to use them from a real emergency.

 

Officials had sent out alerts to mobile phones, through television and radio stations -- the fly in that ointment was predictably, wide-spread power and cellular outages would have had the expected result of limiting that outreach.

The death toll, warns Governor Josh Green, is expected to rise, with search and rescue operations continuing and cadaver-sniffing dogs brought in to help in the search for people's remains resulting from the inferno that overtook them. 70-year-old retired mail carrier Thomas Leonard from Lahaina wasn't aware of the fire and then he smelled smoke. The town was given no real-time information of the danger they were facing.

When he attmpted to leave in his Jeep he was forced to abandon it and run for the shore as cars nearby began exploding. There, he hid for hours behind a seawall while wind blew hot ash and cinders around him. Eventually firefighters arrived, escorting Leonard and other survivors to safety through the flames. 

 

A dry summer and ferocious winds from a passing hurricane fuelled at least three wildfires that erupted this week on Maui. As the most serious of the wildfires raced through parched brush, Lahaina was left a grid of grey, ashen rubble with skeletal remains of buildings under blaze-pancaked roofs. Harbour boats scorched, the stench of burning lingers on the air from torched palm trees.

Destroyed homes and cars Sunday, August 13, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. Rick Bowmer/AP

"The price tag is astronomical in the context of Maui's size, as annual output is about $10 billion."

"With the median single-family house price in Maui just above $1 million, the effect on the housing stock alone pulls the estimate into the billions. Combine this with the loss of a couple of hotels and numerous retail shops, most of which are more highly valued than the typical home on the island, and the number climbs considerably."

"Many visitors to Hawaii are known to travel to more than one island, which means that the cancellation of entire itineraries will have ripple effects beyond Maui. Some would-be travelers could also paint all of the Hawaiian Islands with the same broad brush and shy away from visiting, especially after volcanic eruptions on the Big Island in recent years."

Adam Kamins and Katie Nied, Moody's Analytics economists

A firefighting helicopter makes a water drop as a Maui County firefighter extinguishes a fire near homes during the upcountry Maui wildfires in Kula, Hawaii on August 13, 2023.  PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP via Getty Images

 

Hawaii's Kilauea Eruption Timeline

"[This eruption was] truly unprecedented in the modern record."
"Everybody’s chewing on all the great data collected from this eruption."
"That will go on for years and years."
Christina Neal, head scientist, U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, Big Island 

"There’s no reason why we should have expected there would be hydrothermal activity that would be alive within the first 100 days. This is actually life here!"
"[The discovery suggests] how volcanism can give rise to the chemical energy that can drive primitive microbial organisms and flower a whole ecosystem."
"[Studying how hydrothermal life forms near volcanoes that aren’t along tectonic boundaries on Earth could reveal a lot about other celestial bodies]. This is a better analog of what we expect to them to be like [but] it is what’s least studied."
Chris German, geologist, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Falmouth, Mass. 

"[The findings were highly valuable for the monitoring of Kilauea]: Having very high resolution ground deformation measurements before, during and after eruption is exceptional, and will help us to understand how magma behaves in shallow settings better—and in the Kilauea plumbing system in particular."
Pete Rowley, volcanologist, University of Hull, United Kingdom

Lava from a Kilauea volcano fissure advances up a residential street in Leilani Estates, on Hawaii's Big Island, on May 27. Mario Tama/Getty Images

On April 30 of 2018 the collapse of the Pu'u 'O'o crater atop Kilauea volcano on Hawaii surprised geology scientists and vulcanologists all over the world as the eruption continued for months, producing the equivalent of 320,000 Olympic-size swimming pools of lava transforming the landscape and in the process destroying 700 homes. A detailed timeline of the volcano's destructive eruption, the worst in recorded history, has been published by the Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

The data coming out of that publication has enabled vulcanologists to gain a deep understanding of the most hazardous volcano in America. Further investigation may help uncover mysteries of similar volcanoes located world-wide. One of several active volcanoes on Hawaii, Kilauea has been erupting continuously since 1983. The new eruption sequence initiated and seen in May saw two focal points; one, a flank area known as the lower east rift zone where the surface of the volcano is splitting, and the second, to the west, at the Helema'uma'u crater at Kilauea's summit.

A working hypothesis is that a breakdown of a subterranean barrier allowed magma to flow toward the lower east rift zone, coinciding with the April collapse of the Pu'u 'O'o crater. The lava lake representing a persistent pool of bubbling lava within the crater began to drain from the summit of Halema'uma'u, cracks appearing in the rift zone. The following day, May 3, the flow of lava began, necessitating an evacuation of thousands of residents.

A magnitude 6.9 temblor saw increased seismic activity at the summit on May 4, under the volcano's southern flank, the largest in over 40 years, likely a result of magma pushing against the southern section of the volcano, causing a fault to slip. On May 15 and 17 major summit explosions were recorded, producing plumes 3,700 and 9,150 metres in height, activity once thought to be driven by groundwater reacting with draining magma. According to Dr. Neal, however, new data suggests escaping magmatic gas accounted for the explosions.

June 24 saw fissures appearing in the rift zone and rivers of lava flowing up to 100 cubic meters per second, carrying deeper magma -- since old, stagnant magma had already erupted. The deeper magma was more fluid and packed with dissolved gasses, all erupting at 1200 degrees Celsius, leading to incredibly high fountains of lava emerging from some fissures, up to 80 meters in height. The largest freshwater lake on Hawaii vaporized in 90 minutes, on June 2, and by July hot updrafts contributed to pyrocumulus clouds.

A suffocating vog was produced by sulfur dioxide emissions intermixed with water vapor. As lava met the Pacific Ocean a laze, a mixture of hydrochloric acid, glass particles and steam was produced. Suddenly, on August 4, volcanic activity declined but not before a great area of the island was covered with lava. By the time the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park opened again on September 22 35.5 square kilometers had been layered over by lava and 500 meters of vertical collapse had occurred at the summit.

 Kilauea’s eruption last summer, its largest in 200 years, gave scientists a front-row seat to the volcanic processes that power the planet. In this image from August 5, lava heated to 1000° Celsius pours into the Pacific Ocean, sending a mixture of volcanic gases and evaporated seawater into the air.