In the first moments of the Maui fires, when high winds brought down power poles, slapping electrified wires to the dry grass below, there was a reason the flames erupted all at once in long, neat rows – those wires were bare, uninsulated metal that could spark on contact.
Videos and images analyzed by the Associated Press confirmed those wires were among miles of line that Hawaiian Electric Co left naked to the weather and often-thick foliage, despite a recent push by utilities in other wildfire- and hurricane-prone areas to cover up their lines or bury them.
Compounding the problem is that many of the utility’s 60,000 mostly wooden power poles, which its own documents described as built to “an obsolete 1960s standard”, were leaning and near the end of their projected lifespan. They were nowhere close to meeting a 2002 national standard that key components of Hawaii’s electrical grid be able to withstand 105mph winds. A 2019 filing said it had fallen behind in replacing the old wooden poles because of other priorities and warned of a “serious public hazard” if they “failed”.
Google street view images of poles taken before the fire show the bare wire.
It is “very unlikely” a fully-insulated cable would have sparked and caused a fire in dry vegetation, said Michael Ahern, who retired this month as director of power systems at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.
Experts who watched videos showing downed power lines agreed wire that was insulated would not have arced and sparked, igniting a line of flame.
Hawaiian Electric said in a statement that it has “long recognized the unique threats” from the climate crisis and has spent millions of dollars in response, but did not say whether specific power lines that collapsed in the early moments of the fire were bare.
“We’ve been executing on a resilience strategy to meet these challenges, and since 2018, we have spent approximately $950m to strengthen and harden our grid and approximately $110m on vegetation management efforts,” the company said. “This work included replacing more than 12,500 poles and structures since 2018 and trimming and removing trees along approximately 2,500 line miles every year on average.”
But a former member of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission confirmed many of Maui’s wooden power poles were in poor condition. Jennifer Potter lives in Lahaina and until the end of last year was on the commission, which regulates Hawaiian Electric.
“Even tourists that drive around the island are like, ‘What is that?’ They’re leaning quite significantly because the winds over time literally just pushed them over,” she said. “That obviously is not going to withstand 60, 70mph winds. So the infrastructure was just not strong enough for this kind of windstorm … The infrastructure itself is just compromised.”
John Morgan, a personal injury and trial attorney in Florida who lives part-time in Maui noticed the same thing. “I could look at the power poles. They were skinny, bending, bowing. The power went out all the time.”
Morgan’s firm is suing Hawaiian Electric on behalf of one person and talking to many more about their rights. The fire came 500 yards within his house.
Sixty percent of the utility poles on West Maui were still down on 14 August according to the CEO of Hawaiian Electric, Shelee Kimura, at a media conference – 450 of the 750 poles.
Hawaiian Electric is facing a spate of new lawsuits that seek to hold it responsible for the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century. The number of confirmed dead stands at 115, and the county expects that to rise.
Lawyers plan to inspect some electrical equipment from a neighborhood where the fire is thought to have originated as soon as next week, per a court order, but they will be doing that in a warehouse. The utility took down the burnt poles and removed fallen wires from the site.
Hawaiian Electric also faces criticism for not shutting off the power amid high wind warnings and keeping it on even as dozens of poles began to topple. Maui county sued Hawaiian Electric on Thursday over this issue.
In California, utilities have been addressing the issue of bare wire. Insulating an electrical wire prevents arcing and sparking, and dissipates heat. After Pacific Gas & Electric was found responsible for the 2018 Camp fire in northern California that killed 85 people, the utility launched a program that has insulted more than 1,200 miles of line so far and has buried hundreds of miles of lines in severe risk areas.
Similarly, Southern California Edison has begun work on plans to insulate its overhead distribution lines in high fire risk areas or bury lines in areas at severe risk.
Hawaiian Electric said in a filing last year that it had looked to the wildfire plans of utilities in California.
But Mark Toney called wildfires caused by utilities absolutely preventable. He is executive director of the ratepayer group the Utility Reform Network in California. It is pushing PG&E to insulate its lines in high-risk areas.
“We have to stop utility-caused wildfires. We have to stop them and the quickest, cheapest way to do it is to insulate the overhead lines,” he said.
The US electrical grid was designed and built for last century’s climate, said Joshua Rhodes, an energy systems research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. Utilities would be smart to better prepare for protracted droughts and high winds, he added.
“Everyone considers Hawaii to be a tropical paradise, but it got dry and it burned,” he said on Thursday. “It may look expensive if you’re doing work to stave off starting wildfires or the impact of wildfires, but it’s much cheaper than actually starting one and burning down so many people’s homes and causing so many people’s deaths.”
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