The firestorm that razed the Hawaiian town of Lahaina this month was catastrophic. At least 115 people died and another 1 000 remain missing. Some 2 200 buildings were incinerated by an inferno that caused at least $5.5 billion of damage. But as with earlier wildfires in California, Colorado and elsewhere around the globe, the disaster was by no means inevitable. The frequency of fires on the island of Maui has steadily increased over the past five years.
In the Bloomberg Originals mini-documentary Maui Fire: How ‘Risk Blindness’ Made It Worse, we explore why people, companies and politicians who are well aware of climate risk nevertheless fail to plan or react appropriately. While the precise cause of the Maui wildfire is yet to be determined, and Hawaiian Electric has said it is working with officials on the investigation, the failure to adapt to a rapidly changing environment has been made devastatingly evident.