close buildings got to be a uge problem on all the islands. If you notice in some of the aerial shots of the burn areas the ash piles pretty much touch each other.
The original lot sizes kept things spread out reasonably well but over the last half dozen decades there has been a lot of “infilling.” One of the things I got called on to do, as an old surveyor, when there was a property sale, was to stake the correct property lines. Lots of families, etc. didn’t mind sticking a new house right between two old ones-—for the kids, doncha know. So, yeah, there is a lot of buttsup, way too close, non-standard, non-code, housing.
Re: Building construction...
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A lot of the older houses in places I lived were constructed like this...Maui is/was probably very similar
1x4 or 1x6 tongue-and-groove running vertically, with a "belly band" of a 1x4 running horizontally. Plumbing pipes were located outside of the house. No internal drywall. Roof was tarpaper and 3-tab.
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