Melted remains of an old car tire
Investigators are trying to solve a mystery about the origin of last month’s deadly Maui wildfire: How did a small, wind-whipped fire sparked by downed power lines and declared extinguished flare up again hours later into a devastating inferno that killed at least 97 people?The answer may lie in an overgrown gully beneath Hawaiian Electric Co. power lines and something that harbored smoldering embers from the initial fire Aug.
Aerial and satellite imagery reviewed by the AP show the gully has long been choked with thick grass, shrubs, small trees and trash, which a severe summer drought turned into tinder-dry fuel for fires. Photos taken after the blaze show charred foliage in the utility’s right-of-way still more than 10 feet high.
Asked about the overgrown gully, Hawaiian Electric said in a statement to AP that the right-of-way allows it “to remove anything that interferes with our lines and could potentially cause an outage.”
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