September 24, 2024
A recent report released by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) states that mitigation strategies are needed in Hawaii from the community down to the parcel in order to limit the devastation caused by catastrophic conflagration during wildfires, according to the 2023 Lahaina Conflagration Study.
On Aug. 8, 2023, the report explains, “a grassfire outside Lahaina grew into the deadliest natural disaster in Hawaii’s history and one of the top-10 deadliest U.S. wildfires on record since 1871. This tragedy claimed 102 lives, and damaged or destroyed approximately 2,200 structures, with reconstruction costs estimated at $5.5 billion.”
After the fire, an IBHS team collected data on the building material used across Lahaina, as well as the urban fuel surrounding the buildings “to understand the conditions that contributed to the community conflagration,” states the report. “These data explain the relative importance of structure spacing, connective fuels, and building materials in fire spread into and through the build environment and demonstrate the critical need for a system of mitigations to reduce the intensity and likelihood of conflagration.”
Mitigation Strategies
The strategies suggested by the study are establishing and maintaining fuel breaks around the community, constructing buildings around the periphery of the community with wholistic consideration of fire resistance against embers and flames; maintaining—or even increasing—the structure separation distance for buildings within the community, eliminating connective fuels between homes to reduce potential exposures and fire pathways, and using fire resistant materials and designs.
“Together, these actions across the community and individual parcels also improve the effectiveness of first responders’ suppression efforts, as fewer building ignitions allows for concentrated efforts,” the report states.