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 ironically-named Camp Fire in 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 a wildfire that’s been deadlier. If you are wondering why the year 1918 sounds familiar, that was also the year when a big influenza pandemic occurred as well.
The wildfires have also already damaged or in many cases completely taken out over 2,200 different structures. With close to $6 billion in estimated damages, Hawaii Governor Josh Green called this likely the largest natural disaster that Hawaii has ever experienced since it became a state in 1959.
Then there’s the plant life and other wild life. It’s difficult to estimate the full impact that these wildfires will have on the ecosystem in Maui. And even if you hate other animals and plants, such changes will eventually come around to negatively impact humans and the oh-so-precious economy that so many people worry about.
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 images that you typically see in Hawaii travel brochures. Again, this is Hawaii, which in theory should appear sun-drenched and not New Asgard in Norway after Thanos snapped out half of humanity in the movie Avengers: End Game. 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.
