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Old 09-06-2023, 04:56 PM   #78 (permalink)
JSH
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Sounds like reality to me.

I don’t know if you have been to Maui recently but the environment has radically changed in that past decade. When I visited at the age of 13 the entire interior of the island lush green fields of sugar cane or pineapple fields. These were growing in a naturally dry area due to an extensive irrigation system that bought water down from the rainforests. When I visited a few years ago I was shocked by the view from the airplane. Those lush green irrigated fields were replaced by dry fallow fields because the sugar mill closed in 2016 and 36,000 acres of land was just allowed to sit and repopulate with invasive African grasses like Molasses Grass.

Molasses grass grows 3 to 6 feet tall and goes dormant in the summer. Molasses grass is also adapted to fire cycles were it rapidly grows back after a fire and outcompetes native grasses. So you have tens of thousands of acres of tinder dry grass combined with steady winds. Once a fire starts it is very hard to put out and Hawaii has seen an ever increasing numbers of wildfires. This is compounded by the fact that these fallow fields stretch right up to the edge of cities and towns without any sort of fire break.

The Lahaina disaster was not a surprise. People have been warning about the risk for years but they were ignored because fixing the problem takes money.
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