What Caused the Deadly Maui Fires?
August 21, 2023 in News by RBN Staff
source: lewrockwell
August 21, 2023
August 8, 2023, multiple wildfires broke out in the western and central parts of Maui, burning down an estimated 2,000 acres, including the historical port town of Lahaina. Strangely enough, satellite images show the fires all began around the same time.
The fires — fueled by hurricane-strength 60 to 90 mph winds from Hurricane Dora, which passed some 500 miles south of Hawaii1 — ripped across the landscape at a pace of 1 mile per minute (that’s 60 mph folks).2 In addition to the fire’s rapid spread, the local warning system also failed. As a result, many residents didn’t realize they were in danger until smoke billowed into their homes.
The death toll appears to have been further exacerbated by the fact that schools closed and children were sent home. Many parents remained at work, and because the warning sirens didn’t go off, many children were burned alive in their own homes.
According to Gov. Josh Green, the warning sirens may have been “immobilized” by heat from the fire, but the exact cause for the failure is still under investigation.3 However, Maui also has a cellphone alert system. You may recall Maui residents received a false alert on their phones about an inbound missile threat five years ago.4 Even if the sirens had been destroyed by fire, why wasn’t a cellphone alert dispatched?
Deadliest Natural Disaster in a Century
As of August 15, the death toll stood at 99, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century, and the worst natural disaster in Maui’s history. With only one-quarter of the burned-out area having been searched, and with 1,300 people still reported missing, the number of dead was expected to rise significantly.
In Lahaina, most of the buildings were destroyed, including many of the homes of its 13,000 residents,5 many of whom are indigenous and have lived there for generations.
According to Green, the property losses are estimated at $5.6 billion.6 When asked by a Bloomberg reporter to comment on the historical disaster, President Biden, who was on vacation at the time, had “no comment.”7
This tragic event saddens me as I spent many cold Chicago winters in Maui and have visited Lahaina dozens, if not hundreds of times. I purchased a lot on the hill above the town where the fire first started, before it slid down to Lahaina. Fifteen years ago, I decided to sell it because the time zones did not work out well for managing the newsletter. The entire area where my property was located was burned to the ground.
What Caused This Unprecedented Disaster?
While some government officials, including Gov. Green, are trying to blame the disaster on global warming, climate scientists believe it played only a minor role. As reported by ABC News:8
“Climate change may have amplified the conditions that led to the inferno that decimated a large portion of the island of Maui but it cannot be blamed.
An unknown spark on Tuesday night quickly set parts of the island ablaze, sending flames fueled by a combination of strong trade winds and a landscape parched by drought conditions through the historic Lahaina district and people’s homes.
Despite how quickly the devastation unfolded, climate scientists are warning that climate change may have only played a minor role. Moreover, wildfires have the ‘lowest confidence’ among natural disasters that researchers attribute to climate change, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.9
‘We should not look to the Maui wildfires as a poster child of the link to climate change,’ Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said … The weather and climate factors involved with the Maui wildfire event are more complex, Swain said.”
Obvious and Not-so-Obvious Factors
Two obvious factors are that a) it’s dry season in Maui (which is entirely normal), and b) brisk winds from Hurricane Dora fanned the flames, allowing the fire to spread by leaps and bounds. A less obvious factor is the decision to allow nonnative, highly flammable grassland savannas take over native ecosystems.
Clay Trauernicht, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and an environmental management expert, warned about this in a 2019 letter to the editor of The Maui News, stating, “The fuels — all that grass — is the one thing that we can directly change to reduce the fire risk.”10
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also highlighted the role that poor land management may have played in this catastrophe. In an August 14, 2023, Substack article, Kennedy wrote:11
“Specific measures that can limit the destructiveness of wildfires, tropical fire specialists say, include building firebreaks, reintroducing fire-resistant vegetation, and allowing livestock to keep grasses at a manageable level. Right now, in short, Maui needs a massive land restoration program …
Healthy ecosystems regulate the flood-drought cycle and mitigate wildfires. They draw down carbon, too. Restoring the land is an achievable goal that will have an immediate effect on wildfires, in contrast to long-term efforts to address climate change, a contributing factor but not the primary cause of these fires.”
In the video above, Kennedy interviews Maui resident Ed Dowd about the situation. Yet another relatively common but rarely acknowledged cause of wildfires is poorly maintained power company equipment and/or downed or damaged powerlines.
In this case, as Hurricane Dora made its approach, local news predicted the risk of fire would be high due to downed powerlines, dry brush and low humidity, and Maui residents are now suing the power company for keeping “powerlines energized during forecasted high fire danger conditions.”12
In 2022, Hawaii Electric, which services Maui, proposed a detailed wildfire mitigation plan with a price tag of $2.5 million,13 but according to investigative journalist Lee Fang,14 “the state utility commission dragged its feet” when it came to implementation.
Maui Set to Become a ‘Smart Island’?
Others are proposing the abnormally ferocious blaze may have been intentionally ignited using a directed energy weapon to facilitate a land grab.15 As mentioned, many of the residents in Lahaina have lived there for generations and have long resisted selling their properties to land developers that want to put up new resorts and high-rises.
A number of Twitter/X users claim there was a January 2023 “Smart City Conference” in Maui.16,17,18 However, there’s no conference with that name, and some are incorrectly showing a banner from the 2023 Hawaii Digital Government Summit, which won’t take place until September 25, 2023.19
After further digging, I was able to confirm that the conference people are referring to is the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) 2023.20,21,22 HICSS holds an annual event every January at the Hyatt Regency Resort in Maui. Discussions at this year’s event included digital government and electric energy systems, among several others.
That there are “Great Reset” plans for Maui is indisputable. In August 2018, Hawaii mayors and governors signed an agreement to become the first U.S. state to commit to a 100% clean renewable energy plan.23,24
Maui was also the site of a Smart Grid Demonstration project that took place between 2011 and 2016. The project, called JUMPSmartMaui,25 sought to implement renewable energy and electric vehicles on a larger scale. The project, detailed in a Smart Community Case Study paper by the Mitsubishi Research Institute,26 was later expanded. Hawaii also has plans to implement “digital artificial intelligence government.” That’s the topic of the September 2023 Hawaii Digital Government Summit.27
Was Fire Set to Facilitate a Land Grab?
Journalist and podcaster Efrat Fenigson also claims a contract was signed in 2022 “to build high rise condos and businesses in Lahaina, which was a historical town that couldn’t have any new development done to it.”28 With the entire town now in smoldering ruins, residents are far more likely to sell their land, and new development must be permitted either way.
Indeed, as reported by USA Today,29 private developers are already “approaching residents with offers to buy the land where homes once stood,” and Gov. Green has stated that Lahaina will be rebuilt according to “its own values,”30 which we can assume will include a focus on fulfilling the United Nations’ sustainable development goals.31
The sustainable development goals, in turn, are part and parcel of The Great Reset agenda, which includes the transition to “smart” (read surveillance-ridden) 15-minute cities and communes where people share living spaces.
Some Residents Suspect Directed Energy Weapon Was Used
While the fire involved anomalies that are hard to explain, I haven’t seen direct evidence to suggest directed energy weapons (DEWs) were used to set the town ablaze. Reinette Senum posted a video commentary followed by 20 minutes of cell phone videos from locals that went through the fire that is quite extraordinary and highly recommended you watch.
That said, it’s certainly a suspiciously “convenient” disaster, from the globalist cabal’s perspective. They can now swoop in and buy previously unattainable land from people who may be too desperate to decline.
And, while I’m not ready to blame this disaster on DEWs, some Maui residents are doing just that. In an August 12, 2023, LinkedIn post, Dr. Kathy J. Forti, a clinical psychologist who lives on Maui, describes her experience:32
“A friend called me early on the morning of Tuesday, August 8th and told me he had a strong urge to visit Lahaina that day. Tempting me with lunch at Cool Cats … I said ‘Okay. Let’s go!’
The 30-minute drive was without incident, without winds, and without any warning advisories. As soon as we reached Lahaina, all power got zapped. Cell phone, internet, traffic lights, GPS, the 911 emergency system (which is never supposed to go down) and the power outage caused every store and shopping mall to immediately close …
Then the winds came in, bringing with it a rare rainless hurricane with gusts from 60-80mph. Trees became uprooted and branches were coming down everywhere, along with power poles …
No evacuation sirens ever went off that day when the fires began. They failed as well … These fires were indeed strange. The night before both my friend and many others claimed to have had very restless sleep.
I personally experienced a strange flooding wave of energy in my head, almost like seizure activity … This flooding energy continued on and off the next morning, more so when I was in Lahaina. This told me there was directed energy involved in what was occurring.
This was not just a random act of mother nature. It reminded me of the strange fires in Paradise, California a few years back which swept through and wiped it off the map. Their only crime was getting in the way of a high speed railway project slated to come through the town.
A little bit of history to draw your own conclusions: Historic Lahaina is the key harbor seaport on the island. The Lanai Ferry goes back and forth from there, all the commercial snorkeling and scuba diving firms set sail from there and tourists flock there in daily droves.
The problem with Historic Lahaina was that it had a large old Hawaiian community that was in the way of the developers. Now it’s like ground zero, declared a disaster area, and federal and states rules are probably going to be tossed aside. It’s a toxic mess. They will undoubtedly blame it all on climate change and welcome in the developers to totally bulldoze and level it.
All over the island tracts of land are being bought up by corporations and no one knows who is behind them. Foreign interests? The people on this island are beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together and suspect this was a major power land grab …”
Other Coincidences and Anomalies
Another interesting coincidence is the fact that Maui is the home of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Directed Energy Directorate, described by the AFRL as the Air Force’s “center of excellence for directed energy technology.”33
In the video above, Ryan Cristian with the The Last American Vagabond reviews what we know and can prove about this fire right now.34 As noted by Cristian, while suspicions about DEWs being used are routinely dismissed as “conspiracy theory,” DEWs are clearly a reality, and if they exist and work, it seems fair to assume they may one day be used.
As reported by Motherboard,35 the Pentagon is spending $1 billion a year on DEWs such as high-energy lasers, particle beams and high-powered microwave weapons, and the Maui Directed Energy Directorate claims to have delivered the first-ever operational DEWs to the U.S. Air Force.36
Was a DEW used and timed to coincide with a hurricane to ensure the total annihilation of Lahaina? According to Maui police chief John Pelletier, the wildfire burned hot enough to melt metal,37 and most typical fires simply cannot reach the required temperatures to melt steel and certain other metals.38
Another alternative, of course, is that the fires were intentionally set by arsonists. However the fire in Lahaina began, it clearly benefits those intent on rebuilding Maui into a “smart island.” What easier way to redo an entire town than to have it burn to the ground? For now, all we have are circumstantial suspicions, and if DEW were in fact used, the perpetrators are unlikely to ever admit it.
Sources and References
- 1 NPR August 9, 2023
- 2 AP News August 15, 2023
- 3, 29 USA Today August 15, 2023
- 4 Hawaii News Now January 13, 2023
- 5, 6 AP August 15, 2023
- 7 The Hill August 14, 2023
- 8 ABC News August 14, 2023
- 9 Climate.gov December 15, 2016
- 10 Maui News February 3, 2019
- 11 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Substack August 14, 2023
- 12 Twitter Kanekoa the Great August 13, 2023
- 13 Hawaiian Electric
- 14 Twitter Lee Fang August 14, 2023
- 15 Dianne Marshall Report August 13, 2023
- 16 Twitter Robin Monotti August 14, 2023
- 17 Americas Best Pics Smart City Conference
- 18 Reddit August 13, 2023
- 19, 27 Hawaii Digital Government Summit 2023
- 20 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) 2023
- 21 Hicss.hawaii.edu
- 22 HICSS-56 January 3-6, 2023 Best Papers
- 23 Energy.hawaii.gov Clean Energy Initiative
- 24 Weforum August 20, 2018
- 25 Hitachi JUMPSmartMaui Project
- 26 NEDO Smart Community Case Study
- 28 Twitter Efrat Fenigson August 14, 2023
- 30 Reuters August 11, 2023
- 31 Maui Now July 16, 2023
- 32 LinkedIn Dr. Kathy J. Forti August 12, 2023
- 33, 36 Twitter Last American Vagabond August 12, 2023
- 34 The Last American Vagabond August 12, 2023
- 35 Motherboard June 1, 2023
- 37 YouTube Really Graceful 4:37