Who started the fire? I’ve been to Maui many times and it is a rainforest with almost now lightning storms.
Likely more Climate Change nonsense.
“Who started the fire?”
There are lots of conspiracy theory threads on FR about that.
Most likely cause is that downed electrical lines or arson started the fires. They had a brush fire up the hill from town under control and then pulled the fire fighters off to another fire on the island. The fire reignighted then caught houses on fire. The winds were blowing 60-70+ mph. Coming down off the mountains and running down to the ocean east to west. The majority of Lahaina was older wooden structures(not concrete).
Once the flames caught one house the embers were flying through the air spreading from house to house. Eventually most of the town went up.
I have watched dozens of YouTube videos over the last week about this tragedy. The other main factor at least on Maui is that all the old sugar cane fields are no longer planted with cane or pineapples. It is cheaper to produce in Brazil, Philippeans or other places. Those fields are now just grasslands and scrub brush that runs right down to the edge of town. The grass grows up in the winter/spring and then drys out to straw in the summer/dry season.
You stated that you have been to Maui many times. The west side of the island is very dry. Most of the rain falls on the Hana and east side of the mountain ranges. It typically does not make it over the mountain peaks without dumping the rain. North of Lahaina up by Kapalua is one of the windiest places on the planet. The only place I have ever been that was more windy was Aruba.
The other thing I noticed on several YouTube videos were the broken power poles. One of the videos I watched last night was filmed by a guy walking around Lahaina in the afternoon early evening of the fire. He was walking around downtown. The wind was howling. Traffic was already backed up on Front Street.
There were already broken power poles and power lines down in the middle of the street everywhere. I assume they were not powered because the guy filming was just casually stepping over them. He filmed until dark. Then had to stop because he had to run to save his life.
This is a old infrastructure issue. IF you go to Caribbean islands or even Mexico most of the power poles are not wooden poles. That is because they will not stand up to hurricane force winds. They break because they are top heavy. In hurricane zones the power poles are steel reinforced concrete.
I visited Lahaina around 1999/2000. Had lunch at Cheeseburger in Paradise right on Front Street. It was a quaint town. However, get off of Front Street and it was a old dumpy town full of old tin roofed houses that were very close together.
It was not like the rest of Maui. Frankly, I am surprised it did not burn down sooner.