Maui Wildfire Emergency Management Analysis

Summary of the paper

"After the Fire: Three Years On" is an ISPI commentary on what the August 8, 2023 Lahaina wildfire, which killed more than 100 people, revealed about emergency management policy for island communities, and on what has and has not changed since.

The commentary notes that the Hawaii Attorney General commissioned an independent, three-phase review of the fire and the state and county response. It argues, however, that the structural conditions behind the Lahaina outcome have not been addressed at a level matching the risk: paper plans have been revised, but the vulnerabilities those plans cannot fix remain.

What the paper finds

• Mass notification failed as a system. Wireless alerts, cell infrastructure and siren decision-making failed together, reflecting an architecture not built for simultaneous channel loss.
• Evacuation capacity failed. Citing the Attorney General's independent fire report, the commentary notes that Lahaina's limited evacuation routes were overwhelmed, some blocked by downed utility poles and lines, and that island road networks do not offer the rerouting options continental planning assumes.
• Mutual aid is built for the continent. A system designed for continental delivery timelines cannot give meaningful acute-phase support to an island about 2,500 miles from the U.S. mainland.
• Structural gaps remain. Evacuation route constraints, supply chain exposure to port disruption and the lack of community reserves for multi-week self-sufficiency have not been addressed at the policy level.

What it recommends

• Evaluate all Hawaii coastal and wildland-urban interface communities for the three-factor profile seen in Lahaina: limited evacuation routes, dry fuel adjacency and inadequate warning infrastructure.
• Require community-level emergency supply reserves across Hawaii counties sized for 30-day self-sufficiency rather than the 72-hour household standard.
• Treat Lahaina as a design scenario, not an outlier, in every Hawaii emergency management plan revision.

Who it's for

Hawaii state and county emergency managers, legislators and county councils, fire and land managers, and residents of wildland-urban interface communities.

Cite as

Pulley, Warren (2026). After the Fire: Three Years On — What the Maui Wildfire Reveals About Emergency Management Policy for Island Communities (ISPI CM-01). Island Security Policy Institute, Honolulu. https://ispiglobal.com/papers-landing/cm01-maui-wildfire https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23449892

@techreport{ispicm012026,
  author      = {Pulley, Warren},
  title       = {After the Fire: Three Years On — What the Maui Wildfire Reveals About Emergency Management Policy for Island Communities},
  institution = {Island Security Policy Institute},
  address     = {Honolulu, HI},
  number      = {ISPI CM-01},
  year        = {2026},
  url         = {https://ispiglobal.com/papers-landing/cm01-maui-wildfire},
  doi         = {10.5281/zenodo.23449892}
}

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