Sunday, August 27, 2023

The Maui Fire

 Like many of you, I watched in horror as the fires on Maui broke out, killing hundreds. Then I watched in disgust as the developers came in, trying to buy the rubble and the land beneath it for pennies on the dollar. Then I listened with abject disbelief as the usual suspects tried to blame climate change  for the disaster.

As it turns out, it was probably the fault of the power company, who didn't shut down equipment fast enough to mitigate the damage.

Hawaiian officials attributed the cause of catastrophic wildfires to alleged failures from the state's main power utility company and downed power lines this week after Democrats blamed the disaster on global warming.

The knee-jerk of the left to blame everything on either climate change, racism, or transphobia is starting to get a bit tedious. 

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't forget that a significant number of the dead died at police roadblocks; those who forced their way around survived.

Also, there was a bad fire nearby in 2018 - the report on it was never published because it made the local government look bad, a big issue was regulations preventing people from clearing vegetation near houses.
J

juvat said...

PawPaw,
I don't usually do so, but I got to disagree with your last statement. The left isn't "starting to get a bit tedious". It's been a helluva lot tedious for quite some time now.

Other than that...you're right as rain...as usual.
juvat

Angus McThag said...

I refuse to blame a power company that's barred from doing the work to keep the lines clear of vegetation.

Blame goes to the eco-freaks who won't let people clear trees and debris.

Don McCollor said...

I would lay the blame on accumulated bureaucratic incompetence. I ran across a blog "Cliff Mass Weather Blog" (I cannot attest to the accuracy of his conclusions or the validity of his blog). His explanation is that here was an extremely high amplitude atmospheric wave combined with a very stable air mass on the other side of Maui (modeling shows the hurricane had little or no effect). The combination produced intense, very dry downslope winds on the other side of the mountains (60-90 mph at 10-20% humidity which would quickly dry even wet vegetation). It happened suddenly and apparently without warning, because there are almost no weather stations on the island. To the power company, it was probably totally unexpected. Likely their first knowledge of the wind and that they had of poles down and wires starting fires were outages and people calling in. The article notes that the same type of downslope winds were recorded that day at 83 mph on the Big Island (without fires).

Anonymous said...

There is a whle lotta things that make you go hmmmmm... going on in HI.
The cover up happening is the tell!!!

mostly cajun said...

Yeah, so the utility company says "Ooooh, fire danger!" and shuts down the power.

No fires.

Wanna take a thought as to what the public reaction (egged on by anti-business media) would be to THAT move?

Dave said...

One of the things I've read is that the power company hadn't been able to keep up with needed vegetation clearing, because they've been forced to devote significant resources ($$$) to meeting the state government mandate that all power generation be "zero carbon" by some not-so-far-off (2035, IIRC) future date.

Pouring money down that state mandated rathole meant less money available to spend on powerline maintenance and vegetation clearing.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget the official who blocked sending water to fight the fires until hours after it was too late.