Hawaiian Electric is severely underinsured to pay victims of August’s deadly Maui wildfire and repair its own damaged infrastructure, according to a filing with state regulators this week, raising questions over how it could cover billions of dollars in claims if it is found liable for starting the blaze.
Linemen for Hawaiian Electric work on an electrical pole on Honoapiilani Highway in Lahaina, Hawaii on Aug. 15, 2023. as well as repair its own damaged infrastructure, raising questions over how the beleaguered utility could cover billions of dollars in mounting damage claims if it is found liable for starting the blaze.
“I read that $165 million and the only thought I had was how irresponsible this was,” he said. “Someone was not doing their job when thinking, ‘Have we done everything we have done to protect our business, stockholders, and customers’ and what it costs to cover that?’”Experts said it is common for utilities to have low amounts of liability insurance.
what experts said was a bizarre assessment, comparing its risk to that of California’s as the reason for not having more frequent and robust inspections, vegetation management, and for not creating a public safety power shut-off program. However, that contradicted messaging and assessments that the utility’s own subsidiaries made and submitted to regulators in earlier filings. In 2019, Hawaiian Electric’s subsidiaries put together a resilience working group to figure out how to better integrate their grids. In the Wildfire Scenario section of a report they published, they stated that “the frequency and impacts of wildfires have increased recently” and a big part of that is because of the abandonment of sugar cane fields.
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