Maui wildfire death toll rises to 99; economic impact to the state could reach $10 billion
The Lahaina wildfire death toll is now 99, up three from late Sunday night, and Gov. Josh Green warned that tally will go up “very significantly” in the coming days.
Green told CNN this afternoon that most of the first 80 confirmed deaths were found in and around cars on Front Street or in the water nearby.
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The governor also said that hundreds of unaccounted for people still haven’t “checked in,” but he noted that there are still communication problems on the island and many people who fled the fast-moving inferno may have lost their phones in the process.
Once again, Green stressed the importance of staying out of the restricted areas of Lahaina so FEMA and other search crews can continue their work of finding the remains of victims.
As for the ultimate death toll, he said, “I don’t want to guess at the number.”
Meanwhile, the statewide economic impact of the wildfires on Maui — where the destruction in Lahaina has become the nation’s deadliest single wildfire in decades — is likely to hit at least $8 billion to $10 billion statewide.
That preliminary estimate is from AccuWeather, a source of global weather forecasts and warnings headquartered in State College, Pa.
Jake Sojda, AccuWeather senior meteorologist, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Sunday that AccuWeather’s estimate was preliminary and could grow as information such as the death count and property losses are updated, and aspects of human behavior become clearer, such as will people stay and build or leave.
Sojda said AccuWeather tries not to assume population changes, which gets into forecasting people’s minds, but recognizes that it does happen and “could certainly build into that impact.”
To put this wildfire event into context, AccuWeather’s estimate is approaching all of the tourism spending statewide, some $10.78 billion that was collected during the first six months of this year. The estimate also is more than 50% of the roughly $19.29 billion in visitor spending that was collected last year.
Sojda said the estimate takes into account the importance of tourism in Hawaii. He said that especially applies to Maui, where he said the GDP in 2021 was $10.3 billion, with tourism accounting for about 75% of the revenue.
“The tourism piece makes this more economically impactful,” Sojda said. “Especially since it’s such a large percentage of the GDP. I don’t know if you would find another place in the U.S. with that percentage.”
Maui led the tourism rebound after COVID-19, and although it’s had some slowing in recent months, statistics from the state Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism show that during the first half of the year, Maui drew more than 1.48 million visitors, or 30% of all Hawaii tourists.
It also generated $3.5 billion in visitor spending during the first six months of this year, or 32.3% of all the visitor spending to Hawaii.
Sojda said the 2018 Camp fire, the most destructive wildfire in California’s history and the nation’s deadliest single fire in recent history until the Lahaina wildfire, has come up in comparisons to the situation in Hawaii. He said the Camp fire had some similarities to the Maui wildfires as it “quickly blew through powered by strong winds and completely wiped out (towns).”
He said depending on the source of the data, Camp fire economic loss estimates have ranged from roughly $16 billion to $8 billion to $10 billion —“that’s like what we are looking at for Hawaii.”
However, he said, a critical difference is that the “Camp fire did not impact an area as heavily impacted by tourism as we are talking about in Maui. That can change and factor into some of the estimates as well in terms of recovery.”
