Disasters like the Hawaii wildfires are overwhelming outdated safety systems
Wildfires have torched parts of Maui before, but never anything as devastating as the ones that tore through Lahaina last week.
Wildfires have torched parts of Maui before, but never anything as devastating as the ones that tore through Lahaina last week.
Authorities are still working to understand what could have been done to better protect vulnerable communities across the island. But beyond questions about how the local emergency network performed, there are broader stakes for the entire world: Can emergency systems and infrastructure adequately handle the types of disasters that are becoming more frequent in a warming world?
What the situation on Maui laid bare was how different risks all amplified by climate change could converge with disastrous outcomes. In many ways, that confluence of extremes had until now been underestimated, even by climate scientists, said Laura Brewington, a research professor at Arizona State University’s Global Institute for Sustainability and Innovation and co-director of the Pacific Research on Island Solutions for Adaptation program.
In a reality where climate change is intensifying wildfires, supercharging storms and fueling droughts, heat waves and floods, the very idea of how to stay safe from these kinds of extreme events is being turned on its head.
“What we’re seeing is something that was not predictable even 10 years ago with the best science that we had,” Brewington said.
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