That’s hard to believe it smoldered that long. Don’t y’all get a pretty good amount of snow in places in New Mexico?
Yes, but it can act as insulation in some instances. Weird.
Fires can get into underground deposits of organic matter and keep slowly burning for a long time. Not to mention they can be difficult to extinguish. Whether the local environment in that part of Maui is conducive to this sort of thing, I don’t know.
Then there are cases where fire gets into extensive dead roots or root systems, and such could be exposed at multiple points. I’ve never heard of such burning for many months, but a week or two can definitely happen.
In some cases, especially during “fire weather”, an observer is left behind at the scene of an extinguished (the fire crew thinks) fire. This can be most anyone with a means to communicate back to dispatch, but ideally the observer is capable and equipped to snuff out a small flare up B4 it can really get going. (In 60-80 mph winds in dry brush, they’d better be darn quick!)
I am very curious as to how far the 2nd fire (which then went into Lahaina) started from the fire 6 hours earlier, and was the 2nd fire downwind? An ember can travel a long way in 60+ mph winds.