Fighting the tendency to normalize climate change disasters: my account of the Maui fires
Bright orange and dark red penetrate the black night, bouncing off sandy puddles to create a disorienting collide-a-scope of color. As my feet carefully splash around stray branches and twisted metal, my eyes drink in the war-like scene. Soft booms like distant thunder echo from the source of the colors. I look up as powerful winds threatened to loosen another palm overhead. A wave of the acrid smell brings my attention back. I watch in siren-punctuated silence as flames ripped through historic Lahaina town, racing from hillside to sea, and streams of cars flow from impossibly deep within the flames.
This is my best attempt to bring you into the surreal moment I spent watching the 2023 Lahaina fire from just a few miles away.
When we hear about natural disasters around the world, it can be hard to imagine how it would feel to be present. We can close our eyes and visualize the scenes, but we can’t trigger the same chemical reactions in our brains that create the powerful emotions of fear, anxiety, panic, and pain. We won’t understand exactly how it would feel to shiver neck-high in water for hours¹, or feel the sear of embers chasing our escape² , or fear for our lives as vehicles spontaneously explode around us³. No living being can recount being trapped in their car with no option but to hold onto loved ones while their skin ignites⁴.
I may have experienced a fraction of these emotions as my family rationed our meals and wrestled with decisions about if, when, and how we should risk our own retreat from the area, but I will never know how it felt to be in the shoes of those that faced unimaginably worse.
Disasters like this shouldn’t happen. The tragedy of the Lahaina fires on Maui was created by the “perfect storm” of coinciding variables. Yes, first responders were caught up in two other fires⁵ at opposite ends of the island and Maui’s alarms systems failed to be triggered⁶ ⁷. But don’t let these variables distract from the root cause: a changing climate.
Extremely dry conditions and unusually powerful hurricane winds combined to send fire in Lahaina spreading at over 1 mile per minute⁸ ⁹. Drought had plagued Maui for over 4 years as the island has been stuck in a vicious, climate change induced dry cycle. Hotter than normal temperatures in the area tend to decrease cloud coverage (and subsequent rainfall) and increase the rate of evaporation from the land¹⁰. The lack of clouds to reflect sunlight causes the temperature to increase further, exacerbating the problem. The dry conditions have also led to changes in vegetation as native plants die and are replaced by dry grasses that serve as the perfect fuel source for fire⁹.
The hurricane-force winds in the region also played a role by fanning the flames and pushing the fire quickly⁹. The source, Hurricane Dora, was stronger and lasted longer than usual, breaking the record for the longest lasting category 4 hurricane to ever hit the Pacific Ocean¹¹. Extracting energy from a warmer than usual ocean, it just became the second hurricane to ever travel from the Atlantic ocean, through the Pacific, and across the international date line. There’s no doubt that climate change was the critical factor that led to this horrible loss of life in Maui.
The majority of climate models point towards more disasters like this happening in the future, not just in Hawaii but around the world¹² ¹³. As these events increase in frequency, they won’t affect all of us the same. A recent study from Our World in Data shows that while overall death from natural disasters has decreased over the last century, low-income countries are still far more vulnerable for low-frequency, high-impact natural disasters¹⁴. Even within the Unites States, some geographic areas and population groups will be hit much harder than others¹⁵.
My fear is that while the frequency of these disasters increases, we will give into our natural tendency to remove ourselves from the situations that don’t affect us directly. Like we’ve done with gun violence¹⁶, homelessness¹⁷, and war¹⁸, we’ll normalize the situation to protect ourselves. We will think there’s nothing we can do to help, so we will ignore the problem.
As climate change threatens people around the globe, it’s important to practice our empathy for others and allow it to guide our decisions. While empathy is a trait shared with some animals¹⁹, humans are unique in our ability to imagine the condition of people we’ve never met or even seen before. We can choose to allow this unique connection with strangers to drive decisions that improve this planet for all, or we can stuff these feelings in the back seat and consider the climate only when it’s convenient. As our world becomes more connected and stories are shared farther and wider, I’m hopeful we will choose empathy.
Let’s fight the tendency to normalize.