Videos showing downed power lines apparently sparking some of the early blazes in the Maui wildfires have become key evidence in the search for a cause.
A class-action lawsuit has already been filed seeking to hold the company responsible for the deaths of at least 99 people. The suit cites the utility’s own documents showing it was aware that preemptive power shutoffs such as those used in California were an effective strategy to prevent wildfires but never adopted them.
Hawaiian Electric declined to comment on the accusations in the lawsuit or whether it has ever shut down power before due to high winds. But President and CEO Shelee Kimura noted at a news conference Monday that many factors go into that decision, including the possible effect on people who rely on specialized medical equipment and firefighters who need power to pump water.
Mikal Watts, one of the lawyers behind the lawsuit, told the AP this week that he was in Maui, interviewing witnesses and “collecting contemporaneously filmed videos.” Treu’s neighbor, Robert Arconado, also recorded videos that he provided to the AP. Arconado’s footage, which starts at 6:48 a.m., shows a lone firefighter headed toward the flames as they continued to spread west downhill and downwind along Lahainaluna Road, toward the center of town.
Robert Marshall, CEO of Whisker Labs, a company that collects and analyzes electrical grid data, said sensors installed throughout Maui to detect sparking power lines showed a dangerously high number of such live wire incidents that night and into the following morning.
In Maui, the National Weather Service first began alerting the public about dangerous fire conditions on Aug. 3. Forecasters issued a “red flag warning” on Aug. 7, alerting that the combination of high winds from a Category 4 hurricane churning offshore and drought conditions driven by climate change would create ideal conditions for fire.
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