A few blocks of homes survived on the east and north sides of Lahaina, but the rest of it has been literally wiped out. The town was on the National Register of Historic Places, but all of its many historic buildings, some dating back to the 1830s, are now gone.

As far as officials can determine, a brushfire initially ignited early Tuesday morning just east of town in the dried brush of now-abandoned sugar cane fields. It had been declared contained by 10:00 a.m. and firefighters were extinguishing its remnants.

But at about 3:30 p.m., 70-80 m.p.h. wind gusts from Hurricane Dora's outer bands reignited smoldering embers and then whipped it up within 30 minutes into a raging inferno.

The tall flames swiftly overwhelmed county firefighters and then roared into Lahaina at a speed that surprised many residents and visitors, who had only minutes earlier been going about their day and had no idea of the calamity that was about to befall them.

Civil defense officials believe most of the fatalities occurred early in the disaster. Some people had literally fled into the ocean to escape the fire and had subsequently drowned.

By 9:30 p.m., fire officials had given up all hope of saving the town and turned their efforts toward the evacuation of all remaining residents and visitors north to Kapalua and east to Kahului. By dawn yesterday morning, Lahaina was a smoking ruin.

I'll say this right now: what happened here was a weather-related phenomenon that was caused by climate change and global warming. Hurricane Dora, which began as a tropical storm in the eastern Pacific off southern Mexico, should have weakened back into tropical storm status as it approached Hawaii.

Instead, due to warmer waters now being farther north, Dora strengthened and grew into a category 4 storm of sufficient size and intensity that it managed to sideswipe the islands even as its eye passed 500 miles south of us. The hurricane is now about to pass the international date line, whereupon it will be known as Typhoon Dora.

The young environmental activist Greta Thornburg once said that she wanted people to act with urgency on the issue of global warming as though their house was on fire, "because it is."

Further, because that toll is likely to rise much higher as hope fades for finding alive the many hundreds still missing, the Lahaina tragedy is about to become the deadliest and costliest wildfire in modern U.S. history.

From today's New York Times:

"[The story of the Lahaina wildfire] arguably began decades ago, when Hawaii started experiencing a long-term decline in average annual rainfall. Since 1990, rainfall at selected monitoring sites has been 31% lower in the wet season and 6% lower in the dry season, according to work published in 2015 by researchers at the University of Hawaii and the University of Colorado.

[...]

"As average annual rainfall has been decreasing, average temperatures in Hawaii, like elsewhere in the world, have increased, further drying out the vegetation. In a paper published in 2019, the University of Hawaii researchers wrote that 2016 was warmer than the 100-year mean by .92 degrees Celsius, and temperatures had been inching up by .19 Celsius per decade at the Mauna Loa Observatory.

"Hawaii's landscape is changing in other ways, beyond becoming drier. As wildfires become more common, some native vegetation, which is poorly adapted to fire, has been destroyed. In other places, including the area around Lahaina, long-standing sugar cane farms stopped operating around the 1990s; the land stopped getting irrigated.

"In the place of those crops and native vegetation, dry and invasive grasses spread. Those grasses are better able to regrow after a fire but are also quick to ignite. That has contributed to fires spreading more quickly.

[...]

"Those underlying threats were amplified in Hawaii this past week by a separate threat: Hurricane Dora, which passed south of Hawaii as a Category 4 storm Tuesday. Although the storm was hundreds of miles off the coast of Maui, it contributed to wind speeds of greater than 60 mph, helping the fire to spread at a ferocious speed.

"It's difficult to directly attribute any single hurricane to climate change. But by increasing air and ocean temperatures, warming conditions make it more likely for large storms to gain strength."

May the Lahaina tragedy's silver lining be the alarm bell that arouses our entire country to finally and honestly confront the existential threat posed to everyone by global warming and climate change, regardless of where you live.

The focus in Lahaina has shifted from search and rescue to search and recovery as first responders go house to house and building to building and sift through the ashes and debris - and there were over 2,200 structures in Lahaina before the fire. Further, there are still a number of hotspots in town.

How many of those missing are residents and how many are visitors, I don't know yet. But as I noted yesterday, the fire overtook the town so rapidly that everyone there had little or no warning. Many of the burned-out cars along Front Street contained bodies of people who were trying to escape before the flames overtook them.

Now hopefully, that number of missing will eventually prove to have been inflated due to the complete collapse of all telecommunications systems in west Maui, which precluded individuals who had reached safety from notifying others that they were okay.

But I'm going to be a realist here. The resident population of Lahaina was 13,200 and of west Maui as a whole, about 25,000. At least 3,000 are presently in emergency shelters, and about 4,000 others are staying with relatives and friends on Maui. Some in the shelters are likely to be sent to Honolulu for the time being.

So, if 4% of west Maui residents are indeed missing, the odds of them showing up elsewhere on the island likely diminishes by the hour. Personally, I think the death toll in Lahaina may well eventually exceed 100 and in all honesty, that's my best-case scenario. We're hoping for the best, but we're also preparing for the worst.

1. The official death toll in Lahaina is now 101. Identification of recovered remains has begun, and relatives will be notified first before the names are released to the public.

2. After a lot of reconciling of shelter lists with police / FEMA reports, etc., we now know that 1,322 people are missing. Honestly, five days after the fire, I'm not sure how much that number will change at this point. I don't want to assume most are gone, but it's hard to not think that.

3. Maui County and FEMA personnel have searched 20% of the town's ruins in the effort to locate and recover the victims' bodies.

the Thomases fished, rafted on the Snake River and sat by a campfire overlooking the Teton Range with the other couples. At one point, the Paolettas serenaded the justice with a song they wrote about him.

The more a party makes inflammatory statements... the greater the urgency will be that we proceed to trial quickly... to ensure an impartial jury."

-- Judge Tanya Chutkan

John Lauro: "We're asking the government to show good cause. Your honor designated those items under rule 16 and case law - extrajudicial speech, or public speech is not one of the good cause factor."

Judge Chutkan: "It is if that speech causes witness intimidation or harassment. It must always yield. Mr. Trump, like every American, has a first amendment right to free speech. But that right is not absolute."

Lauro: "We don't have a normal situation."

Judge: "What about a situation where a person is denigrating a witness? What is meant to protect that from happening?"

Lauro: "Obviously since prosecutors brought this case in the middle of campaign, Trump has right to respond to political opponents."

Judge: "But that has to yield. Regardless of what is going on with his, I hate to say, his day job, this is a criminal case. The need for this to proceed in normal order and protect witnesses, integrity of process means there are going to be limits on defendant's speech."

Lauro: "My client can't be subject to a contempt trap."

Judge: "What we're talking about here are the parameters of this order. What we're all considering means there are certain things, if they have impact on the administration of justice or witnesses, can't be said regardless of what political activity the defendant is engaged in."

Lauro: "If my client has a memory of something on the campaign trail that he wants to talk about, he's entitled to speak about it."

Judge: "No, he can't speak about details of the case he's being tried on."

Too bad Trump's presence wasn't required, so she could say it to his face.

Georgia Judge Says Cameras Will Be Allowed To Cover Indictment As Media Awaits New Charges Against Donald Trump
By Ted Johnson

August 14, 2023 11:20am

Given they are on such opposite sides of the political landscape, I'm sure Drew got a very hefty retainer to be on call for Trump. Now we'll see if it was big enough for him to actually enter an appearance in the case.

I don't think Trump is anywhere near as interesting to Drew as his other clients, like Offset and Cardi B.

But yes, I'd expect him to be out there making denials for Trump. And yes, I agree, he's a really good trial lawyer. But Trump isn't going to go to any trial.