The Hawaii electric company whose equipment is believed to have sparked the deadly Maui wildfire removed damaged infrastructure from where the blaze likely started — a move that may have jeopardized the federal investigation into the disaster.
Records obtained by the Washington Post show that the utility company hauled away fallen poles, power lines, transformers, conductors and other equipment from the area surrounding the Lahaina substation starting on Aug. 12 — days before Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents arrived on sight.
In doing so, the power company may have violated national guidelines on how utilities should handle and preserve evidence after a wildfire and compromised the probe into the cause of the inferno that killed at least 115 people.
“If a lot of equipment is already moved or gone by the time the investigators show up, that’s problematic because you want to observe where the equipment was relative to the ignition site,” Michael Wara, who directs the Climate and Energy Policy program at Stanford University, told the Post.
But in a statement, Hawaiian Electric spokesman Darren Pai said the company has been “in regular communication with ATF and local authorities and are operating with them as well as attorneys representing people affected by the wildfires, with inventories and access to the removed equipment, which we have carefully photographed, documented and stored.”
The Post has also reached out for comment from the utility and the law firm representing it, California-based Munger, Tolles and Olsen.
Locals have told the Post how the fire started early in the morning of Aug. 8 when a transformer blew and sparked dry grass on Maui County-owned land, just about a mile away from Lahaina’s historic waterfront.
Hawaiian Electric had apparently failed to shut off the electricity in advance of high winds sweeping through the area, and within an hour the blaze roared down the hillside toward the ocean, destroying nearly everything in its path.
The utility is now facing at least eight lawsuits from local residents who are desperately trying to rebuild, claiming the company failed to preserve necessary evidence.
In one of those suits, a law firm representing more than two dozen Lahaina families asked Hawaiian Electric to preserve the evidence twice beginning on Aug. 10, according to correspondence obtained by the Post.
The next day, the Washington Post reported, one of the utility’s attorneys replied that Hawaiian Electric’s main focus was the safety of first responders who were still fighting the blaze, displaced residents and restoring power.
The company reportedly said it was “taking steps to preserve its own property,” but because so many local, state and federal agencies were still on the ground trying to fight the fires and clear debris, it was “therefore possible, even likely, that the actions of these third parties, whose actions Hawaiian Electric does not control, may result in the loss of property or other items that relate to the cause of the fire.”
“Hawaiian Electric will take reasonable steps to preserve evidence, but cannot make any guarantees due to the rapidly evolving situation on the ground, which is also not within our control,” the letter read, according to the Washington Post.
In response, attorneys for the residents submitted a temporary restraining order to stop Hawaiian Electric from greatly altering the scene where the fire started.
By Aug.18, a judge signed an interim discovery order detailing how the utility should have handled evidence around the “suspected area of origin.”
Under the National Fire Protection Association guidelines, “the integrity of the fire scene needs to be preserved” and “evidence should not be handled or removed without documentation.”
Hawaiian Electric argued in court documents that it removed the evidence because the company does not “own or control the land or public streets beneath its facilities.”
The utility has also hired a California-based “cause and origin” expert to “preserve potential evidence related to the fire,” according to the Washington Post.
Meanwhile, the death toll from the fire has now reached 115 people, and the number of missing has increased to 1,100.
