With close to $6 billion in estimated damages, this likely will be the largest natural disaster that Hawaii has ever experienced since becoming a state.
The grim numbers just keep getting grimmer. The death toll from the wildfires in Maui, Hawaii, has now reached 93, according to an August 12 update from the County of Maui. That makes these Maui wildfires the deadliest in modern American history. Yes, that’s right, the deadliest, topping the 85 lives that the Camp Fire in Northern California claimed in 2018. And unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that this 93 number won’t keep rising over the next few days and weeks.
You’d have to go back to the 1918 Cloquet fire in northern Minnesota that killed 453 people to find an American wildfire that’s been deadlier. If you are wondering why the year 1918 sounds familiar, that happened to be the year when another big pandemic occurred: the 1918 influenza pandemic.
The Maui wildfires have also damaged or destroyed over 2,200 different structures. With close to $6 billion in estimated damages, this will likely be the largest natural disaster that Hawaii has ever experienced since it became a state in 1959, according to Hawaii governor Josh Green.
Then there’s the plant life and other wildlife in Maui. It’s difficult to estimate the full impact that these wildfires will have on Maui’s ecosystem. And what happens to Maui’s ecosystem will eventually come around to negatively impact humans because humans are heavily integrated parts of that ecosystem.
You may have heard the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. But when you see the devastation from the following ABC News drone footage, there are no words:
The bleak, gray landscape in this drone footage is not exactly the image that you typically see in Hawaii travel brochures. Instead, this is destruction that could take a long time to fully reverse. The remaining burnt out palm trees look exhausted from fending off the blaze. And you can still see smoke rising in many places, signifying the potential presence of smoldering fires.
Such widespread devastation has left Maui in critical condition. There has certainly been the immediate toll on human life and health. Wildfires can kill you in many ways. One is by engulfing you in flames and burning your skin and everything around and under it.
