The Lahaina Fire
Lahaina
In Lahaina, the small brush fire broke out August 8 at 6:40 am that was declared 100% contained shortly before 10 a.m. By 3pm a fire 40 miles away in Kula was at its worst and required island wide response.
At 3:40 pm back in Lahaina a fire started or a flare-up. Residents on the west side of Lahaina were told to shelter in place, according to updates posted on the Maui County website. No warning sirens sounded, there was no cell phone service. By 4:30 pm the fire hit the historic town. By 6:30 pm residents were fleeing into the ocean.
Eric West provides drone video that highlights the many strange anomalies seen from the air.
Fire Characteristics and Anomalies
1) Without warning, Lahaina was ravaged by fire. Despite the 80 sirens on Maui not one was sounded. Residents fled from a virtual fireball of destruction. Yet exit roads were being blocked by police.
2) The heat melted steel and glass. Steel’s melting point is around 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit (F).
Glass melts at 2,600 F. House fires and wildfires only ever reach temperatures of 1,500 degrees F. High winds with a lot of fuel could go higher with a bellows effect.
There is no fuel other than the car.
What makes this more puzzling, the house next to it is untouched and the shrub still has its leaves.
Bushes with leaves
3) What melts steel and glass but leaves surrounding trees standing?
4) How can a tree stand tall with leaves on it.
And have it burn from the inside and not even scorch the bark
5) What grazes the back of a car and continues forward to melt metal and glass in the next car or destroy a nearby building yet leave the original car otherwise untouched?
What can melt and engine and have the back half not burnt with gas tank and paint cans in tact, while the surrounding house and hut are barely damaged.
6) What travels around certain structures in its downwind path, while completely pulverizing surrounding buildings?
7) What can leave trees standing, melt metal and glass, while reaching across water to engulf boats in a spontaneous blaze? These boats were not near fuel sources. Flying sparks alone do not easily explain why they burned.
8) Despite heat intense enough to melt metal and glass and to incinerate boats on the water, plastic not attached to metal survived, like this plastic piggy bank. The same strange phenomenon also occurred for blue objects, like the blue buoy along the boat above. There is more data coming in, nothing conclusive at this time.
9) What turns buildings into white dust?
Lives have been lost, including children at home from school while their parents worked. The sacred history of Hawaii has been annihilated. Historical buildings and cultural artifacts have been turned to ashes. Homes and structures have been destroyed. Maui has lost its epicenter for small independent businesses.