Maui Fire Chief Brad Ventura goes over a timeline of the Lahaina fire during a meeting of the Maui County Fire and Public Safety Commission on Thursday, the first commission meeting since the Aug. 8 blaze. The Maui News / MELISSA TANJI photo
KAHULUI — In just over two hours on Aug. 8, the Lahaina fire had jumped over two major roadways, engulfed multiple structures and set roofs on fire, miles away from where it had begun, Maui Fire Department Chief Brad Ventura said Thursday.
The fire spread due to embers “being driven from area to area,” Ventura told the Maui Fire and Public Safety Commission on Thursday, the first commission meeting since the deadly Aug. 8 fires. Ventura shared a general timeline of what transpired that day, saying that times and occurrences had been verified through its dispatch system.
“So we are comfortable with releasing these numbers as facts reported by the public,” he said.
The Aug. 8 fire that killed at least 98 people and destroyed much of Lahaina town was different from other fires, Ventura said.
“For the most part, firefighters do their job, they don’t take fire personally,” he said. “This is just something we are trained to do and we face every day and week on our job. But this fire was different, this fire was very personal, this fire destroyed homes, and destroyed our homes, our family’s homes, it took loved ones from us, and it took away our town.
“And this fire will forever leave a mark in the hearts of all of us, including your firefighters,” Ventura told commissioners.
Ventura added that firefighters, police, paramedics, dispatchers, ocean safety personnel, hospital workers and community members all stepped up. The public will never hear all of the heroics that went on that day, he said.
After Aug. 8, firefighters continued to show up to work.
“They wanted to come to work more frequently than we had work and apparatuses available for them,” Ventura said.
Pointing to a map of Lahaina displaying the types and locations of calls on the day of the fire, Ventura chronicled the fire’s spread from the Lahainaluna area to neighborhoods below the bypass to the Puamana and Wahikuli areas later that evening.
According to Ventura, fire crews were stationed in an area southeast of Lahaina Intermediate at 3 p.m. Aug. 8.
A fire had started early that morning near the intermediate school, but the county had said it was 100 percent contained shortly before 9 a.m. It described the fire that broke out around 3 p.m. that afternoon as a flareup.
At 3:22 p.m., the fire jumped the Lahaina Bypass, and by 3:38 p.m. “we had multiple structures on fire already,” Ventura explained.
By 4:27 p.m., the fire had gone below Honoapiilani Highway.
“Remember, like many of these large disaster fires and wildfires that are wind driven, it doesn’t mean that everything between those last two points was completed consumed yet,” Ventura said. “The fire was traveling and the growth of the fire was caused by embers being driven from area to area.”
At 5:27 p.m., roofs were reported on fire near the Lahaina Cannery and Kahoma areas.
Later at 7 p.m., the fire was reported in the areas of Puamana and Shaw and Front streets.
At 9 p.m., a fire was reported in the Wahikuli area, indicating “that’s when the homes were impacted in the north end of Wahikuli.”
Ventura did not share any possible causes of the fires. He said that his presentation was vetted by county attorneys due to fire-related litigation, which also limited the questions he could answer from commissioners. Maui County has filed a lawsuit against Hawaiian Electric blaming it for the Lahaina fire; HECO says it appears its equipment started the early morning fire but put responsibility on the county for the spread of the afternoon fire.
In addition to the Lahaina fire, which eventually consumed about 2,170 acres, crews were also busy that day battling fires Upcountry — Ventura said a fire in Olinda started just after midnight on Aug. 8 and burned over 1,000 acres; a fire in Kula started just after noon on Aug. 8 and involved 200 acres. Then the Pulehu fire, which started around 6 p.m., consumed over 3,000 acres.
“This became for our department basically a complex to deal with when we talk about incident command systems and how you manage resources,” Ventura said.
Units that responded to the fires not only included the on-duty fire engines and battalion chiefs, but also relief engines, utility trucks, wildland vehicles and even a relief lifeguard utility vehicle.
The Olinda fire had 14 responding units, the Lahaina fire had 23 units, the Kula fire had 13 units and the Pulehu fire had four units.
Ventura said there are some similarities in the units that responded to the Olinda and Kula fires, as the department had to move resources from one fire to another. But for Lahaina, all units assigned to the fire remained there and additional resources were added.
“Basically on this day every apparatus that our department had here on Maui were put into play with some sort of staffing,” Ventura said.
Ocean safety officers who had already been off duty on the evening of Aug. 8 were assigned to coastal search operations in nearshore waters on Aug. 9 while the U.S. Coast Guard was in deeper waters, Ventura said.
The Honolulu Fire Department flew over nine members for search and rescue, 21 members for firefighting and seven leadership position staff for support and incident management.
The state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry and Wildlife also fought the Olinda fire and continues to monitor it, Ventura said.
The state Airport Rescue Fire Fighters and the Hawaii National Guard provided Chinook helicopter support.
There was also an incident management team and areas of the Fire Department also provided invaluable support, including mechanics, as apparatuses were in constant use battling all of the fires, Ventura said.
In the wake of the fire, Battalion Chief Jeffrey Giesea said that 179 firefighters participated in testing with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. NIOSH took blood and urine samples from firefighters to see what toxins they may have been exposed to.
He said “results are a ways out,” as it is a complex process. Individuals will have their results sent to them and the department will get an aggregated report, but no personal information will be released.
Giesea said the information will give the department an idea of the risks moving forward and what they can do to protect the health and safety of personnel.
He said the testing was also open to other county departments.
Giesea also said that over 100 of the department personnel also enrolled into a cancer cohort study for firefighters.
* Staff Writer Melissa Tanji can be reached at mtanji@mauinews.com.
Maui Fire Chief Brad Ventura goes over a timeline of the Lahaina fire during a meeting of the Maui County Fire and Public Safety Commission on Thursday, the first commission meeting since the Aug. 8 blaze. The Maui News / MELISSA TANJI photoToday's breaking news and more in your inbox
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