The disaster that erased the beloved West Maui town of Lahaina this week comes with the bitter taste of bewilderment.
Brush fires met high winds whipped by a far-off hurricane, and overnight a historic town was gone, a pile of smoke and ashes.
Living in Hawaii long enough gives you a familiarity with sudden catastrophes, the kind that can obliterate a community in a week, a day or an instant.
Drought on Maui turned the grass into ready fuel and heightened the risk of wildfires, and then a hurricane brushed by.
And when wildfires swept over Maui and the Big Island, it was a brutal reminder that Hawaii needs to be a serious climate leader, to nurture and spread the environmental consciousness that too many other states lack.
Persons:
Brush
Organizations:
Lahaina
Locations:
West Maui, Lahaina, Hawaii, Maui