‘Risk Blindness’ Is Making the Climate Crisis Worse
Catastrophes like the Maui wildfire may be avoidable if governments and insurers stop looking to the past to predict a warming future.
Lahaina, a town on western Maui in Hawaii, was destroyed by wildfire—the deadliest in US history.
Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
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The firestorm that razed the Hawaiian town of Lahaina this month was catastrophic. At least 115 people died and another 1,000 remain missing. Some 2,200 buildings were incinerated by an inferno that caused at least $5.5 billion of damage.
But as with earlier wildfires in California, Colorado and elsewhere around the globe, the disaster was by no means inevitable.