One year after the largest US wildfire in more than a century, Hawaiian Electric Company, the largest utility in Hawaii and a political power broker, appears poised to avoid the bankruptcy fate of California mega-utility PG&E. The Lahaina wildfire lawsuits brought against Hawaiian Electric, Maui County, and others were resolved in a multi-billion dollar global settlement with the victims. However, the public is still no closer to finding out what caused the fire, or Hawaiian Electric’s possible culpability in it.
Hawaiian Electric is responsible for almost $2 billion of the $4 billion settlement, but that amount could have been much higher absent the settlement. Rather than risking a trial, the defendants reached a settlement before the cause of the Lahaina wildfire was publicly revealed.
The Maui Fire Department’s “origin and cause report” has an unknown release date. In late June 2024, conflicting accounts emerged regarding a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF’s) report on the fire’s cause. The ATF announced that its report was complete and awaiting the Maui Fire Department’s approval, but Fire Chief Bradford Ventura retorted that neither the ATF report nor the department’s was ready. In a phone call, ATF spokesman Jason Chudy claimed that the ATF’s report is a comprehensive addendum to the fire department’s origin and cause report. When asked about the release date, Chudy said, “It’s all up to the Maui Fire Department.”
Hawaiian Electric employs several people close to Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen, including his daughter Sayble Bissen. Because the fire department reports directly to the mayor, and because Maui County and Hawaiian Electric were co-defendants, these connections raise questions about the timing of the report’s release.
One year later and despite the victims having reached a settlement, the public remains in the dark about the cause of the wildfire, which killed over 100 people.
What We Know About the Wildfire
According to an April 2024 report by the Fire Safety Research Institute, which was requested by the Hawaiian attorney general’s office, there were two fires: one in the morning that began around 6:30 a.m., and one in the afternoon that began around 3:00 p.m. All sources indicate that the afternoon fire occurred as a reignition of the morning fire that began somewhere in the Lahainaluna Ditch, which is owned by the Kamehameha Schools endowment. Hawaiian Electric is responsible for the maintenance of its equipment in the ditch.
According to a 2020 audit of Hawaiian Electric, its “Vegetation Management has not been able to complete its planned mitigation programs over the last few years and has underspent its budgets.” This was three years before the Lahaina fire occurred, but according to a resident, a large nearby ditch was “not manicured at all” on the day of the fires. Hawaiian Electric claims that it removes any potential dangers to its equipment, but said it does not handle landscaping on private property.
Investigators found remains of a car tire, an abandoned utility pole, and other flammable debris in the reignition zone, which some believe could have been the source of the second fire. An expert stated that a smoldering log or tire can burn for several hours. Given the high winds and dry conditions on August 8, 2023, it was ripe for a conflagration. Investigators found a charred utility pole in the middle of the ditch, and some speculated that it might have been a contributing factor. However, Gemsley Balagso, who lives directly across from the ditch and was an eyewitness, told the ATF that the second fire began further up the hill from the abandoned utility pole. This would place the fire much closer to Hawaiian Electric’s Lahainaluna Substation. Controversially, Hawaiian Electric removed debris and equipment from the substation before investigators arrived on the scene.
Tech company Whisker Labs used data—gathered by sensors that track electrical pulses on the grid—to report power outages around the same time as the first reports of the morning fire. Locals reported a fire sparking in the grass by the substation and the sound of a transformer blowing. Substations are equipped with lithium-ion batteries which store energy for emergency power supplies. Thermal runaway—a condition in which damaged lithium-ion batteries enter an uncontrollable self-heating state—is known to linger for hours and can spontaneously reignite. After the transformer blew, perhaps the reserve batteries kicked in and inadvertently sparked the second fire In fact, a similar scenario happened at a New York substation just a couple of months prior to the Maui fires.
If any of the lithium-ion battery backups were damaged during the first fire, thermal runaway can be very difficult for firefighters to extinguish. Oddly, there is no mention of the destroyed substation in any of the official fire studies or reports.
A Conflict of Interest
Historically, Hawaiian Electric is a major influencer in Hawaiian politics and drives Hawaii’s renewable energy obsession, which is one of the Hawaiian government’s biggest priorities. Between 2013 and 2018, senior Hawaiian Electric officials donated generously to former Governor David Ige’s campaign and at least two of his top advisors were former Hawaiian Electric employees.
After he was elected, Ige controversially appointed a new member to the Hawaii Public Utility Commission in 2016. Soon after, the commission voted against a merger between Hawaiian Electric and Florida-based NextEra Energy that had been in the works since 2014. Current Governor Josh Green also received campaign donations from top Hawaiian Electric officials. After the fires, Green blamed the effects of climate change, despite evidence seeming to implicate the utility company.
If liability for the Lahaina fire and damages lies with Hawaiian Electric, then the utility could be at fault for much more than $2 billion. Maui County could also bear some of the blame if their firefighters failed to properly extinguish the first fire.
Sayble Bissen, the daughter of Mayor Bissen, works for Hawaiian Electric, and Mahina Martin, the mayor’s spokesperson, has a decade-long history as an employee of Hawaiian Electric. The mayor’s chief of staff, Leo Caires, is a co-founder of renewable energy company Gen-X Energy Development and has had business dealings with Hawaiian Electric in the past. While that deal fell through, Caires made clear that it was the landowners’ fault and not Hawaiian Electric’s. Although the mayor recused himself from Maui County’s decision to sue Hawaiian Electric for damages, he did not recuse himself from any of the other lawsuits.
Whether Hawaiian Electric exerted its political influence to delay public disclosure of the origin-and-cause report while a settlement was being negotiated isn’t known. In any case, the victims’ attorney says that the settlement represents a kind of justice.
“This global settlement will give fair justice to the people of Lahaina,” said Jesse Creed, liaison counsel for the individual victims. “And it was achieved before the one-year anniversary of the fires, which is relatively quick in litigation.”
Regardless of what the origin and cause report says, transparency and accountability are critical for maintaining trust between the government and the people of Hawaii.
Perhaps the global settlement is best deal the victims could have gotten, but public faith in the process would have been best served by complete transparency on the part of all parties.
