> It shows how fickle fires can be: Utter damage, just piles of ash; and eight feet away a building is untouched
Watch this drone video - you can sort of understand why when you see how the flame front moves, it’s not a straight line but more like ripples. The flames follow the fuel, and occasionally embers alight in something flammable which flares up and starts a new front or burns out without joining the fire because there’s nothing downwind to set alight. I’ve seen grass fires do the same thing when the wind is gusty, little unburnt patches left behind because a wind shift made a backburn that shielded a little patch.
https://youtu.be/ffV5tmrrgMA?si=8mqEQ_EdO1T7XWpv
That’s the random thing about fires: A fire can be blazing hot and furious yet mere feet away a combustible structure is not affected. Fires create their own winds; and that, perhaps, is the most fickle thing about them. All the more reason that fires should never be taken lightly.
And, in the Maui conflagration, either the authorities didn’t think the fires were that dangerous, or the authorities were terribly inept.
Tragic, any way one looks at it.