The information below is still valid at 5p Friday Hawaii Time.  New data indicates the rains over the Big Island will likely exceed 25 inches in places. In Maui, the rains will likely exceed 15 inches.  Extreme flooding and mudslides are likely with rainfalls of this intensity.  If you live in a flood-prone area or in a low-lying area on these two islands, I urge you to finish preparations, which includes considering pre-evacuating into a safer area.  Note: Winds may gust above 100 mph in the mountains and higher elevations of the Big Island. This will be the first hurricane to affect Hawaii in the 126 years of records.  We have a Hurricane Warning for the Big Island, a Tropical Storm Warning for Maui and Lanai and tropical storm watches are in effect for Oahu and Kauai.  Life-threatening high surf is forecast for each of the islands. Damaging winds are forecast, especially in the higher elevations. 

The full story is here .  While Lahina has some unique issues (historic sites, limited resources because of its island location, the fire was so hot that some water pipes melted) and 100+ building permits have been issued, the fact is that that this rate of recovery is far too slow. As the article points out: After Hurricane Iniki destroyed 2,000 homes on the Island of Kauai in 1992, most of those homes were rebuilt within a year.  Kathleen and I visited Kauai just months after Iniki and things were a beehive of activity. The more we build bureaucracies and government in general, the slower things go.  A National Disaster Review Board will be able, over time, to create best recovery practices for localities like Hawaii and California. We simply cannot afford to wait -- Congress needs to get on this issue immediately.  

50 Days Ago: Hurricane Helene Develops in the Gulf of Mexico Helene's aftermath should be the lead story on each network's evening news for the foreseeable future.  Here's the latest on the horror in far east Tennessee, far northwest South Carolina, and western North Carolina: the situation is unbelievably bad and the people we pay to mitigate the effects of natural disasters are, at best, failing at their mission.  In the autumn of 2023, we had at least some reporting from the legacy media about the Maui "land grab" after the horrific fire that struck the City of Lahina. The historic city burned to the ground and the fire killed more than 100.  Serious questions remain unanswered about the Maui Wildfire, which is yet another reason why the United States must  create a National Disaster Review Board , see more below. But that is not the primary topic of this piece.  FEMA and insurance companies -- or people claiming to represent them -- have brought out that ...

While I completely agree Hawaii officials missed every opportunity to prepare for the catastrophic Maui Wildfire of 2023 , including the Maui emergency managers going to Honolulu for meetings the day of the hellish fires, here's the problem: how were they supposed to prepare?!  The wildfire killed 102 and utterly destroyed the once-beautiful town of Lahina.  The fact is that many, if not most, emergency managers don't know how to prepare for this type of disagree. One of the reasons they do not know how to prepare is because there is no central resource for this type of information like there is a National Transportation Safety Board for that type of accident.  This is why the United States needs to join Great Britain and other nations and establish a National Disaster Review Board so that we stop making the same mistakes over and over.  During this election season, ask your congressional candidates about this issue. 

The horror on Maui continues . The news media has largely forgotten the victims of the August fire that killed 101. It is difficult to determine whether their plight is due to incompetence (Hawaii doesn't know how to handle the aftermath of wildfires) or evil (they are trying to force the victims to sell their valuable land for below-market prices). Three days after the fire, it was obvious that a Natural Disaster Review Board would have been tremendously valuable in this case . The NTSB, after which I want to pattern the Disaster Review Board, offers family assistance  to the victims of airline crashes and similar events. That would be an especially valuable service in this case.  We are 9 months after the fire and Fox News is reporting: FSRI investigators are still trying to get some records from the Maui Emergency Management Agency. Research program manager Derek Alkonis said Wednesday that they requested incident activity logs and other records from MEMA on multiple occas...

The point of this nonsense is to proactively deflect criticism of state officials. Report from CNN. The conditions causing the Lahaina Fire, which has taken 99 precious lives, to be so intense were  not  caused by global warming nor were they caused by Hurricane Dora, nor were they caused by invasive grasses.  The cause has been identified as a mountain wave somewhat similar to the mountain wave involved in the 2022 Marshall Fire in the Boulder, Colorado area. Initial high winds blew down a power line which sparked a fire. Per the New York Times'  graphic below, Maui fire officials, perhaps prematurely, declared the fire was "contained." New York Times Then, the mountain wave helped create extreme winds and, for Hawaii, extremely low humidity -- perfect conditions for the fire to spread. Those winds may not have been detected as they should have been because there is no National Weather Service (NWS) weather observing station in west Maui! The analysis identifying t...