Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii is on fire

figures....

 

Actually, any engine can draft, they just have to have hard suction hose which shouldn't be hard to obtain. Just a point of clarification.

 

Unmaintained grasslands seem to have been the problem and everyone knew that was going to happen. Trust for king and state own most of it. Water that used to irrigate lush gardens there now used for potable supply. Another case of not wanting to pay cost for desal

Highly flammable grass in Hawaii fueled spread of deadly Maui wildfires, experts say

 

Draft from ocean to hydrants in Lahaina away from ocean would require 30 - 50 feet of suction lift and a totally different pipe network. Most fire districts in sw fl refuse to allow draft hydrants as they don't want to "contaminate" their trucks..

 

Correct although if an area is setup for it some places have drafting hydrants that are "dry hydrants " that you draft from next to the water source. Certainly not oceans though. And agree that no one is going to put salt water in their trucks unless it was a matter of life and death. I don't disagree that drafting from the ocean isn't a viable option just making a correction on your first comment about drafting.

Now a company did come in and pump sea water into portable barriers to form temporary sea walls in daytona after the hurricanes last year. I'd be curious to see if they could adapt something like that for this purpose.

 

Distrcts here don't even want to draft out of lakes. We had to put in a 20k gal tank to feed a draft hydrant as they wouldn't approve a lake intake

 

It's more than the grasslands. Apparently, a big part of the problem is from converting the landscape to pineapple agriculture over a century and a half ago.

How 19th-century pineapple plantations turned Maui into a tinderbox

 

around Lahaina it is former sugarcane fields that were abandoned and became overran with tall, exotic grasses that provided the fuel to get the fire raging. This has happened before but this time it happened with 60 mph winds blowing. They have known about this problem for decades and did nothing to fix the problem. On the island overall, too much water was diverted to large ag. Not sure how much is left though. from 2017. I know that on Kauai they like to grow GMO corn seed because they can get one more crop per year than in other climates and think that corn seed has become the biggest ag on Maui now too

With pineapple and sugar production gone, Hawaii weighs its agricultural future - The Washington Pos

KAHULUI, Maui — Tens of thousands of abandoned acres of farmland lie fallow on this island, cemeteries of Hawaii's defunct plantation era, which met its end last year when the state's last remaining sugar grower shut down an operation that had run for 146 years.

Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co.’s sprawling sugar cane fields used to provide visitors to Maui a rolling green blanket as they arrived at the airport, but they are newly stagnant, joining other growers in a long decline. Facing competition from cheap foreign labor, a shortage of farmworkers and some of the nation’s highest land costs, the sugar and pineapple plantations that used to be the state’s lifeblood are not redeploying into active agriculture, raising questions about the industry’s future here.

“Pineapple is lost, sugar is lost, and we now have one sole industry, which is a very dangerous position to be in,” said Maui County Councilman Alika Atay. “We have put all our eggs into one basket, and that is tourism. But not everybody who lives on this island wants to work in the hotel industry, and it’s almost impossible to feed a family here working as a farmer. We are now seeing drastic displacement of young people leaving Maui because of a lack of economic opportunity.”
............................
Sugar had, at one point, been Hawaii’s top crop. Now the corn seed industry is the state’s dominant agricultural land user, followed by commercial forestry and macadamia nuts. But none of those products, not even when combined, come anywhere close to filling the economic void created by the loss of sugar and pineapple.

 

Better view of the ocean without all those pesky trees in the way.

 

Historic banyan tree in Maui shows signs of growth after wildfire damage

 

Evolution

Many tree species have adapted and have defense mechanisms (thick bark, sap) to help protect them against fire. I didn't even know this was a thing so to speak until after several major wildfires out here in CA. Can barely tell where the fire burned even in spots where fires burned through acreages of forest.

 

There are trees in California that only release their seeds after a wildfire, some of the controlled burns are specifically to facilitate that. Which is crazy, but it’s part of the landscape for that region.
Hawaii doesn’t generally have wildfires like this, much of what burned wasn’t native. And this tree is from India (it’s also not native), so no one knew how it would react. Even if it survived, the dirt (which isn’t used to this either) could have burned out and left it starved for nutrients, or created a char layer that didn’t let water through.
So it’s a huge relief it seems to have come through, that tree is a huge deal there.

 

Thanks! I didn't even know that about CA's trees but I'm still pretty naive, tbh. Need to read up some more. My neck of SoCal regularly sees wildfires, and we've had quite a few major, national news type fires in recent years.

Def seems a big relief about that tree in Hawaii. Pretty amazing imo.

 

A good article on that and some other adaptations there.
The Important Relationship between Forests and Fire - American Forests.

 

And if you have an NYT sub, a good read on how 5he non native plants in Hawaii made the fire way worse.

How Invasive Plants Caused the Maui Fires to Rage.

 

read about masting. trees intentionally short their seed output (think acorns) to limit the number of predators that can survive on their annual output of their seeds and then occasionally produce massive numbers of seeds to overwhelm the ability of the predators to consume them leaving more for reproduction. Oaks and some other trees are masting this year so yes, there are a LOT more acorns than usual.

 

There are pine trees in Florida that are the same way. Apparently the heat activates the pine cone seeds someway.