2023-08-25 12:41:20
The violent fires which broke out on August 8 on the island of Maui, in the archipelago of Hawaii, devastated almost all of the tourist city of Lahaina. Two weeks following the tragedy, which claimed the lives of a hundred people (hundreds of others are still missing), Hawaiian Electric is accused of having destroyed evidence, according to documents consulted by The Washington Post.
The American daily explains that “The Hawaiian Power Company, likely the source of the deadly Lahaina Fire, had utility poles and other equipment removed from a burned site, undermining potential evidence in connection with an official inquiry into the origin of the fire”. The operator would also have removed “fallen poles, power cables, transformers, conductors and other equipment near a substation in Lahaina around August 12.”
The “most destructive and deadly” fire
“If many items of equipment have been moved or removed before the arrival of the investigators, this is harmful for the investigations, which require that we can note the location of all the equipment to study the conditions of the departure of the ‘fire”, explains to the newspaper Michael Wara, head of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University.
The origins of the Lahaina fires are still under investigation. However, a growing body of evidence indicates that wind-damaged Hawaiian Electric equipment sent sparks flying into the dry brush surrounding the poles, says the Washington Post.
The daily newspaper of the federal capital was the first to report it: the electricity company did not cut the current despite the alert announcing strong winds. However, she defends herself by saying that she has taken other preventive measures. “Hawaiian Electric is now implicated in nine cases for its role in the start of the fires that ravaged Maui, including the one that destroyed Lahaina and killed at least 115 people, the worst death toll on record. United States for this type of disaster in a century.”
Maui County filed a lawsuit Thursday, Aug. 24, once morest Hawaiian Electric for failing to turn off the power when it was warned of high winds, and for failing to maintain its equipment and surrounding vegetation “so as to prevent the outbreak of fire”.
The fire in Lahaina is, recalls the Washington Post, “the most destructive and deadly thing Hawaii has ever known”.
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