Cleanup from Maui fires complicated by island’s logistical challenges

Cleanup of areas destroyed in the Maui wildfires could end up being one of the most complex to date, federal officials said, given the island’s significant cultural sites, its rich history including a royal residence and possibly remains of people who died in the disaster.
The first stage of cleanup started in late August, with around 200 Environmental Protection Agency workers in white protective gear removing toxic household debris from Upper Kula and the town of Lahaina including gas cylinders, pesticides, fertilisers and battery packs used in solar power.
They have monitored the air quality and sampled for heavy metals and asbestos.
The EPA expects to hand over responsibility later this month or in November to the US Army Corps of Engineers, which will oversee removing the remaining debris over the next six to 12 months.
About USD 400 million has been budgeted, but the cost could go higher to remove an estimated 400,000 to 700,000 tons of building debris from about 1,600 parcels that once had homes and businesses.
“This will be the most complex fire response to date,” said Corps’ debris subject matter expert Cory Koger, who since 2017 has responded to cleanups of seven wildfires sites including the Paradise, California fire that killed 85 people and destroyed 19,000 structures as well as several others in Oregon, Colorado and New Mexico.
The August 8 wildfire killed at least 97 people and destroyed more than 2,000 buildings, most of them homes. Seven weeks on, the first group of residents returned to survey the remains of their property and collect any belongings they could find.
The debris removal not only is occurring on an island in the Pacific Ocean, but Maui has no landfills certified to take hazardous waste. So the EPA is forced to ship hazardous waste to licensed disposal sites on the West Coast.
Cultural monitors, who are Native Hawaiians from Maui, are also accompanying the EPA and eventually the Corps during the cleanup. Lahaina was once the royal residence of King Kamehameha, who unified Hawaii under a single kingdom by defeating the other islands’ chiefs.
His successors made it the capital from 1820 to 1845, according to the National Park Service.
Hawaiian kings and queens are buried in the graveyard of the 200-year-old historic Waiola Church, which along with the nearby Lahaina Hongwanji Mission, was engulfed in flames.
As of September 29, the EPA had completed cleanup on over 1,000 of the 1,598 parcels that need to be cleared across Maui. All parcels cleared so far are residential properties, and the agency expects to finish the remaining residential sites in the coming weeks. It started work on the first of about 150 commercial parcels, which officials acknowledge will take longer.
After that, the Corps will bring in excavators, bulldozers and dump trucks to remove debris such as standing structures, vehicles and dead trees.
Authorities last month said the Hawaii Department of Health reported that sampling and monitoring of the burn sites did not “show evidence of poor air quality or any hazardous levels of contaminants in the air”.