Car tires, propane tanks, gas generators and rusty appliances are stacked on the sides of dirt roads.
“That means not everything is a yard for people,” she said on a ferocious July day in Kahikinui, a remote native Hawaiian homestead community in southeastern Maui, where wildfires are the biggest concern.
In June, neighbors and volunteers removed four weeks of weekends from their property in community-wide efforts to create a “defensible space” or to create an area around a home with no fired vegetation or debris. They purged 12 tons of waste.
“It’s ugly, but pretty beautiful for me,” said Graham, a member of Kahikinui’s Frywise committee, which is part of the fast-growing program of the nonprofit National Fire Protection Assn. This will help residents assess the community’s fire risk and develop plans to mitigate it.
Kahikinui is one of dozens of Hawaiian communities seeking ways to protect themselves as decades of climate change, urban development, and harmful land use policies have reached a peak to cause more destructive fires.
The state has 250,000 acres of unmanaged fallow farmland, with almost all of its buildings located within the wild urban interface, with two-thirds of the community having one road and ingress and out.
But experts say that even with so many factors outside the control of the community, transforming your neighborhood can significantly improve your resilience.
“Fires are not like other natural disasters, they can only move if they have fuel and they have a lot about it,” said Nani Barrett, co-executive director of Hawaii’s wildfire management organization, a 25-year-old nonprofit organization at the state’s frontline fire risk mitigation.
Neighborhoods across the US are tackling the same challenges. Recently, we found that 1,100 communities in 32 states share similar risk profiles to places recently devastated by urban wildfires.
“Firewise” movement
The Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization helps communities like Kahikinui become members of Firewise. In the decade before the August 2023 fire that destroyed Lahaina, 15 Hawaii communities joined Firewise USA. Since then, the number has more than doubled to 31, with dozens more increasing in the course of participation.
“Everyone says, ‘My God, what can we do?'” Shelley Aina, former chairman of the Fireworks Committee at Waikoloa Village, a community of 8,000 residents on the west of Big Island, remembered the months since the Maui fire.
The development is exposed in large numbers, surrounded by dry invasive grass and surrounded by one main road, but has already experienced some close calls over the past 20 years. It was first recognized as Firewise in 2016.
As a trained housing evaluator for Hawaii’s wildfire management organization, Shelley and her husband, Dana Aina, have given over 60 free ratings for their neighbors since 2022, assessing their traits for ignition vulnerabilities. Volunteers removed Kiawe trees along the house last year along the fuel destruction. Residents have approved additional HOA fees for vegetation removal in the interior lot.
According to retired U.S. Forest Service scientist Dr. Jack Cohen, the retired U.S. Forest Service scientist, these measures could have a major impact as people in fire-prone states adapt to more extreme wildfires.
“The solution is in the community, not in the broken state, because the solution is not broken because it doesn’t stop the fire in extreme circumstances,” Cohen said.
Direct flames from wildfires do not usually launch a big city fire, he said. The wind-blowed embers can move miles away from the fire, land on flammable materials like dry vegetation, or accumulate at corners where the deck meets siding.
“They’re not wildfires, they’re city fires,” Cohen said.
The solution doesn’t necessarily require expensive retrofits like an all-new roof, but it targets specific locations within 100 feet of a home where embers can ignite the material. In densely populated areas, residents need to work together, making the efforts of the community as a whole, like Fire, important. “The house is as ignition resistant as its neighbors,” Cohen said.
Communities cannot be transformed on their own
Despite renewed interest in fire resilience, community leaders face challenges when mobilizing their neighbors. Mitigation can cost money, time and sacrifices. For example, if you need to maintain vegetation regularly, cutting the grass once is not enough. Self-satisfaction is set. Means such as removing dangerous trees can cost thousands of dollars.
“I don’t know how we’ll deal with it because those who have them can’t afford to beat them,” Shelley Aina said. AINAS will try to provide low-cost measurements, such as installing metal screens behind vents and crawl spaces to keep out embers.
Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization helps you with as much cost as possible. It gave Kahikinui a $5,000 grant for trash can service to carry its waste, helping Waikoloa village borrow a wooden chipper it had removed. Barrett said it was difficult to keep up when needed, but even a small amount of financial aid can have exponential effects.
“You give them money and they’re gathering,” she said. “We can give them $1,000, which can do 1,000 hours of cleanup.” HWMO was able to expand its grant program after Maui was fired for donations from organizations such as the Bezos Earth Fund and the American Red Cross.
When federal funding for climate mitigation is uncertain, communities need far more financial support to transform their neighborhoods, said Kimi Barrett of Source Economics. “If what we’re trying to do is save people and our communities, then we have to invest a lot in our people and our communities,” Barrett said.
Those investments are just a small portion of the billions of dollars in the losses that lasted after Megafire, Barrett said. A recent study by the US Chamber of Commerce and Allstate found post-disaster resilience and preparatory investment of $1.
Another hurdle is to see others ignore their roles and ask residents to do their job and sacrifice. “Neighbors ask, ‘What about the county land? There’s no routine maintenance,” said Shelley Aina.
Her husband, Dana Aina, said it reminds people that caring for the land and people is Cleana, or responsibility. “The island is a canoe, and the canoe is an island,” he said. “We all have to paddle together.”
Larger stakeholders are beginning to make changes. Among them, Hawaii has passed laws to create a post for the state fire service, and its main utility, Hawaiian Electric, has installed several power lines underground and installed AI-enabled cameras to detect ignition faster.
Meanwhile, the Fire Wewise community has found that making its own mitigation will give you more influence when seeking funds or for others to do their part.
After 66 residential communities in Kawaihae Village on the island of Hawaii joined Firewise, they finally managed to acquire adjacent private landowners and states to clean up fuel damage and grass.
“If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be anyone’s radar,” said Brenda Dufrenne, a member of the Kawaihae Firewise. “I think Firewise is a way to show people that you’re trying to help yourself.”
Angueira writes for the Associated Press.
