Maui residents who made desperate escapes from oncoming flames, some on foot, asked why Hawaii’s famous emergency warning system didn’t alert them as fires raced toward their homes.
Thousands of Hawaii residents raced to escape homes on Maui as blazes swept across the island, destroying parts of a centuries-old town and killing at least 36 people in one of the deadliest U.S. wildfires in recent years.
A dangerous mix of conditions appears to have combined to make the wildfires blazing a path of destruction in Hawaii particularly damaging, including high winds, low humidity and dry vegetation. And climate change.
The blaze erupted Friday near the remote Caruthers Canyon area of the vast wildland preserve, crossed the state line into Nevada on Sunday and sent smoke further east into the Las Vegas Valley.
Nearly 200 million people in the United States, or 60% of the U.S. population, are under a heat advisory or flood warning or watch as high temperatures spread and new areas are told to expect severe storms.
Smoky air from Canada’s wildfires shrouded broad swaths of the U.S. from Minnesota to New York and Kentucky on Wednesday, June 28, 2023, prompting warnings to stay inside and exacerbating health risks for people already suffering from industrial pollution.
