Two years after wildfires, Maui Fire Department’s changes to staffing, fleet, fire code aim to prevent another tragedy

On the day Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen sat down for an interview about the upcoming two-year anniversary of the Aug. 8, 2023 wildfires, a red flag warning went into effect and a brush fire burned in Makawao.

Conditions were eerily similar when four wind-whipped wildfires broke out across Maui, killing at least 102 people and destroying more than 2,200 structures in Lahaina, and burning to the ground another 26 structures in Kula.

Now, the community that Bissen oversees is undergoing a massive recovery and major changes that include everything from the leadership and staffing of its emergency agency to the thermal imaging equipment used by firefighters to detect hotspots. 

“We’re all more aware,” Bissen said Thursday in his conference room in Wailuku. “I think we’re more on guard. I think we probably all do a better job of taking care of each other, helping each other.”

The wildfires exposed multiple vulnerabilities in the emergency preparedness and response of the small county spread over three islands. But Bissen and the heads of the county’s major response agencies — the Maui Emergency Management Agency, the Maui Fire Department and the Maui Police Department — say the county now is much more prepared to respond to emergencies, and to prevent disasters, due to the lessons learned and the changes that have been implemented.

Each department leader spoke with the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative last week. So did an official with Hawaiian Electric. The utility company also has taken action over the past two years to harden its infrastructure and mitigate against fires. Today through Wednesday, HJI will present a story a day about what is being done to keep Maui County safe.

HJI begins with the Maui Fire Department and Fire Chief Brad Ventura, who said the wildfires “still weigh heavily on everybody in the department.”

Many of Maui’s firefighters faced extreme and tragic situations during those wildfires that were exhausting, stressful and heartbreaking — and went on for days.

“So I would say collectively everybody’s been doing everything they can within their capacity to make sure something like this … never happens again,” Ventura said.

To battle the brush fires in Lahaina, Kula, Olinda and Pūlehu on Aug. 8, 2023, the Maui Fire Department deployed nearly every employee and vehicle, but still “found itself outmatched by the extreme weather and fire conditions,” according to its after-action report released in April 2024.

That’s why one of the biggest changes the department has made are in bolstering its staffing and fleet, and why the Maui County Council did not hesitate to approve funding in the next fiscal year to meet those requests.

The Fire Department’s total budget in the fiscal year ending June 30 went from $60.2 million to $70.2 million, an increase of about $10 million that included $4.6 million for wages and salaries, $2.7 million for equipment and $2.6 million for operations.

It was part of Maui County’s overall budget increase of nearly $200 million, from $1.07 billion in fiscal year 2024 to $1.26 billion in fiscal year 2025, as the county invested in housing assistance, wildfire recovery repairs and improvements, and disaster mitigation.

The $1.56 billion fiscal year 2026 budget approved by the council and signed by the mayor in June also came with recovery-related projects and assistance, but some of the burden on the local budget has been eased by about $2 billion in federal disaster recovery funds that the county is receiving for rebuilding homes, improving public infrastructure and mitigating disasters.

But before the federal dollars arrived, Bissen’s request in last year’s budget for 29 new Maui Fire Department positions was approved by the County Council. While much of county government is struggling with vacancies, all of those positions will be filled by October, Ventura said.

That includes 21 jobs in operations: six battalion chief drivers, three tanker drivers for Kula, three tanker drivers for Hāna, three firefighter I positions for Pūko‘o so the station on Moloka‘i’s remote east end will have three personnel per day, and three drivers and three firefighters for Wailuku to enhance capability in the busiest district. 

There are also eight new positions for support services: four fire prevention personnel (three inspectors and one in public education), three personnel in the department’s training and health and safety bureaus, and one public information officer.

Maui Fire Department plans to place an upcoming class of recruits in entry-level firefighter I positions, allowing the department to promote current firefighters to the new roles.

The new position of battalion chief driver, will “become a very, very powerful tool,” Ventura said.

Currently, battalion chiefs have to juggle commanding the incident in the field while coordinating with officials in the Emergency Operations Center. The six new drivers will serve as a “second set of hands, eyes, ears and mouth” to help improve communication with the operations center and allow the battalion chief to focus on directing firefighters. 

The addition of three inspectors also will be crucial. Currently, six inspectors cover the entire county, and they’re “taxed” by the daily requests for inspections from a community that has become hyper-aware of overgrown brush and other fire hazards. That’s why the department is focusing on building up its Prevention Bureau. The county recently updated its fire code to increase clearance of vegetation around structures from 30 to 100 feet and increase fines for violations. 

As of July 2, the fire department had notified the owners of 103 properties that their vegetation needed to be managed, Ventura said. So far, inspectors have visited 62 properties, with 52 having mitigation work done to pass inspection.

“So we are focused a little bit more on the brush, but science tells us that these large concentrations that go through urban neighborhoods are caused by ember ignition,” Ventura said. “So we do need to focus on what we do at home.”

Growing interest in the Hawai‘i Wildfire Management Organization’s “Firewise” program shows that many residents are taking the risk seriously, with the number of certified communities growing from four in Maui County pre-fire to 10, Ventura noted.

This fall, the fire department plans to hold two-day trainings in the field and the classroom to teach individual communities what fire crews are looking for when they defend a neighborhood and how properties can be made safer and more resilient.

Since the fires, the department’s “tactics coming off the truck” haven’t drastically changed — even before 2023 the department still needed to be vetted for national standards, Ventura said. But now on red flags day, staffing and the number of vehicles is increased. The department also is more proactive in sending resources to the field right away. 

During a recent fire near the intersection of Honoapi‘ilani and Kuihelani highways, the department deployed three helicopters “right off the bat” so it could get water to the head of the fire more quickly than could be done by chasing it with a couple of firetrucks, Ventura said. 

“We can put in a big investment up front and attack the fire kind of really heavy,” Ventura said. “Or, if we don’t catch it, we’re fighting fire for three to five days, and that’s going to cost a lot (more).”

To be proactive, the department needs a large fleet with ample relief vehicles. In the coming years, its fleet will grow by nearly two dozen. 

That includes donations from the Sayre Foundation of a small brush truck that’s already on island, one mini truck, three 1,500-gallon water tenders and one 3,500-gallon water tender, all of which will be placed in the department’s relief fleet that is used for training and to increase capacity during a fire. 

Five mini trucks, three tankers, two full-size fire trucks or engines, a hazmat truck and a rescue truck also are on order to replace older vehicles that will then go to the relief fleet.

To expand services, the department is ordering three mini trucks for Kīhei, Wailea and the future Olowalu station, two tankers for Kula and Nāpili, and one full-size fire truck or engine for the future Haʻikū station.

Some vehicles will be arriving in 2025, with the rest coming over the next three years. Fire engines and large trucks, for example, take four years to build. 

On the Mainland, larger campaign fires rely on hundreds of vehicles driving from other counties or states.

“We can’t do that,” Ventura said. “So we have to just create that opportunity kind of in our backyard.”

The department also is modernizing its equipment and technology. Since the fires, Ventura said, “everything from what’s in the firefighter’s hand to what’s on a computer has been enhanced.”

All 14 engines now are equipped with thermal imaging to monitor hotspots underground as crews mop up a fire. The department had been researching the equipment prior to August 2023, and quickly moved to purchase and install them after the fires.

Maui County and Hawaiian Electric traded blame after the fire, with the county saying downed power lines sparked the fire that eventually consumed Lahaina and the utility company saying firefighters left the scene too early, allowing for the fire to restart. A federal investigation eventually put responsibility on Hawaiian Electric.

When asked how the department now decides to call a fire and leave the scene, Ventura said, “we pretty much do everything we can to stay on scene” until a fire is 100% extinguished. But in cases of larger blazes, like the 9,000-acre Central Maui fire in 2019, the department will stay until the perimeter is controlled enough so that any fire inside it “cannot escape the edges.”

An example is the 330-acre Kahikinui fire in June. Crews could not “drag hose” across the entirety of the blaze, but they did a lot of work on the perimeter and positioned themselves at the head of the flames to push them around the houses. Even after the state took over operations on the multi-day fire, the Maui Fire Department sent a callback crew on a relief apparatus to help monitor overnight.

Resources are limited, and firefighters can’t always stay on scene after a fire is extinguished because they need to respond to other calls, Ventura said. But, if the perimeter is controlled, that gives them the upper hand if they have to return and beat back any flare-ups.

“We have to make the best decision we can based on the circumstances,” Ventura said. 

The department also relies on drones, which come with infrared capabilities that can spot hotspots across the landscape. The program was barely a year old when the 2023 fires happened, and now the department uses the drones more often, including over the challenging terrain of the nearly 600-acre Crater Road fire in July 2024.

The drones now are able to tap into the widespread network of artificial intelligence-powered cameras and weather stations that Hawaiian Electric has invested in since the fire. The cameras can detect smoke and help HECO decide whether it should shut off the power proactively in high fire risk areas, which it did for the first time on Maui last month. 

When a massive earthquake triggered a tsunami warning in Hawai‘i on Tuesday, Ventura pulled up the weather cameras positioned across the island to find them all tuned in to the ocean. 

“That was one piece of technology that we’ve been really grateful for, and we use it every week,” Ventura said. “They’re aware of multiple hazards. It doesn’t have to be fire only.” 

However, Ventura said, even “with all the preparation and the resources and all the notification systems, when you have an extremely wind-driven fire … it’s very hard to stop.”

Ultimately, preventing fires is a community effort, from the equipment that utilities and first responders share, to the private landowners that Maui Fire Department is working with to control brush, to individual residents tending to their homes.

“Everybody has a role, and we keep saying this — it’s a kākou thing,” Ventura said, referencing a phrase that emphasizes the importance of collective effort. “Everybody has a responsibility.”

*EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is the first in a four-part interview series with officials from the Maui Fire Department, Maui Police Department, Maui Emergency Management and Hawaiian Electric that will publish this week ahead of the two-year anniversary on Friday of the Lahaina and Upcountry wildfires. Tomorrow, the Hawai’i Journalism Initiative focuses on the Maui Fire Department.