The large wildfires in Maui can spread offshore and impact ocean-dwelling boats due to high winds and radiant heat, wildfire experts told Newsweek, refuting a new conspiracy theory spreading on social media.
As of Sunday, more than 1,000 people remained missing as rescue teams continued to search for victims affected by the deadliest wildfire in over 100 years in the United States. The death toll, also as of Sunday according to Maui County, had risen to 93 people and has climbed steadily since the fires began raging last Tuesday. Hawaii Governor Josh Green has issued his fifth emergency proclamation.
Nearly 4,500 residents of about 72,500 tracked by the Hawaiian Electric Company are still without power as of Monday morning, according to the U.S. Power Outage Map. Lahaina has been particularly impacted by the wildfires, with images and videos depicting neighborhoods in ashes.
Videos have circulated online promoting the conspiracy theory questioning how and why boats are aflame off the shores of Maui. One such video, uploaded by a TikTok user in an undisclosed location, contains ominous music and shows glowing images of devastation lighting up the night sky.
Lee Frelich, a fire expert and director of the University of Minnesota Center for Forest Ecology, told Newsweek via email that it is possible for fires to spread to boats.
“With the high winds blowing offshore lots of glowing red-hot embers could rain down on boats, and if they land on a flammable object on a boat, could start it on fire,” Frelich said. “Also, for those boats very close to the shore, intense radiant heat from the flaming front could also start fires.
“Obviously, the further away from shore, the lower the chance that this would happen due to rapidly falling probabilities of a given boat being hit by the right type of embers with greater distance.”
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Lake fires in northern Minnesota are a common occurrence due to the same phenomenon, known as spotting or spot fires, he added, though the effects vary based on island size, distance from shore, fire intensity on the shore, and wind speed determining whether a given island burns.
The effects can be so strong that fires could cross a smaller water body to an opposite shore.
“With regard to where the Maui fires started, it was likely inland because the winds were blowing from the mountains towards the shore,” he said, adding that more information obtained by on-the-ground investigators is required to make a definitive statement.
Dan Kashian, professor and associate chair of biological sciences at Wayne State University, told Newsweek via phone that the weather conditions in Maui reminded him of wildfires in Yellowstone National Park in 1988, and of the Peshtigo fire in 1871 that killed more than 1,200 people and destroyed about 1.5 million acres in northeast Wisconsin.
“There’s no doubt in my mind [that fires can hit boats in the ocean],” Kashian said. “When you see that town cooked like that, that fire was raging hot and moving quickly and it wouldn’t surprise me at all. Fire conditions are crazy sometimes.”
Steady winds, hot temperatures and dry conditions can come together simultaneously to lead to devastation, Kashian said, adding that speculation remains on what prompted the wildfires to start.
Tim Brown, a research professor at the Desert Research Institute and director of the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, Nevada, told Newsweek via email that it’s possible for embers to get carried by strong winds and land on combustible material on a boat and ignite.
Elizabeth Pickett, co-executive director of the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, told The Verge that more droughts in Hawaii in recent years have led to larger grassy and vegetation areas dying out.
“When there are larger and bigger, more frequent hurricanes and storms that pass by, it does change our wind patterns and our humidity levels,” Pickett said. “That adds to the threat of extreme fire behavior. It’s like the icing on the cake to the other changes we’ve already seen on the ground that have increased our risk over time.”
Newsweek reached out to the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization via email for comment.
A conspiracy theory spreading across social media by climate change deniers involves claims that the federal government’s directed energy weapons, including lasers and electromagnetic technology, have wreaked havoc in Hawaii, with some posters suggesting that they have the ability “to set the Pacific Ocean on fire.”