Watch: Downed power lines could have started deadly fires in Hawaii

Awakened by howling winds that tore through his Maui neighbourhood, Shane Treu went out at dawn and saw a wooden power pole suddenly snap with a flash, its sparking, popping line falling to the dry grass below and quickly igniting a row of flames.

He called 911 and then turned on Facebook video to livestream his attempt to fight the blaze in Lahaina, including wetting down his property with a garden hose.

“I heard ‘buzz, buzz,’” the 49-year-old resort worker recounted to The Associated Press. “It was almost like somebody lit a firework. It just ran straight up the hill to a bigger pile of grass and then, with that high wind, that fire was blazing.”

Treu’s video and others captured the early moments of what would become the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century. Now the footage has emerged as key evidence pointing to fallen utility lines as the possible cause.

Hawaiian Electric Co. faces criticism for not shutting off the power amid high wind warnings and keeping it on even as dozens of poles began to topple.

A class-action lawsuit has already been filed seeking to hold the company responsible for the deaths of at least 101 people. The suit cites the utility’s own documents showing it was aware that preemptive power shutoffs such as those used in California were an effective strategy to prevent wildfires but never adopted them.

“Nobody likes to turn the power off — it’s inconvenient — but any utility that has significant wildfire risk, especially wind-driven wildfire risk, needs to do it and needs to have a plan in place,” said Michael Wara, a wildfire expert who is director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University. “In this case, the utility did not.”

“It may turn out that there are other causes of this fire, and the utility lines are not the main cause,” Wara said. “But if they are, boy, this didn’t need to happen.”

Hawaiian Electric declined to comment on the accusations in the lawsuit or whether it has ever shut down power before due to high winds. But President and CEO Shelee Kimura noted at a news conference on Monday that many factors go into that decision, including the possible effect on people who rely on specialised medical equipment and firefighters who need power to pump water.

“Even in places where this has been used, it is controversial, and it’s not universally accepted,” she said.

Maui Police Chief John Pelletier also expressed frustration at the news conference that people were complaining both that power was not cut off earlier and that too many people were unaccounted for because of a lack of cellphone and internet service.

“Do you want notifications or do you want the power shut off?” he said. “You don’t get it both ways.”

Mikal Watts, one of the lawyers behind the lawsuit, told the AP this week that he was in Maui, interviewing witnesses and “collecting contemporaneously filmed videos.”

“There is credible evidence, captured on video, that at least one of the power line ignition sources occurred when trees fell into a Hawaiian Electric power line,” said Watts, who confirmed he was referring to Treu’s footage.

Treu uploaded three videos to Facebook on August 8 starting at 6.40am, three minutes after authorities say they received the first report of the fire. Holding a hose in one hand and his phone in the other, he streamed live as the first police cruisers arrived and can be heard warning officers about the live power lines laying in the road.

At one point, he zooms the camera in on a cable dangling in a charred patch of grass, surrounded by orange flames.

Treu’s neighbor, Robert Arconado, also recorded videos that he provided to the AP. Arconado’s footage, which starts at 6.48am, shows a lone firefighter headed toward the flames as they continued to spread west downhill and downwind along Lahainaluna Road, toward the center of town.

By 9am, Maui officials declared the fire “100% contained,” and the firefighters left. But about 2 pm, Arconado said the same area had reignited.

A video he filmed at 3:06 p.m. shows smoke and embers being carried toward town as howling winds continued to lash the island. Arconado continued to film for hours, as towering pillars of flame and smoke billowed from the neighborhoods downhill, forcing people to jump into the ocean to escape.

“It was scary, so scary,” Arconado said. “There was nowhere to go. … I witnessed every single thing. I never go to sleep.”

Wara said the video posted by Treu also raised questions about Hawaiian Electric’s assertion that it had disabled an automatic recharge mechanism that turns electricity back on after a failure because it appeared that the downed wire Treu recorded was still live.