OHIO — The governor of Hawaii called the wildfires in Maui “the largest natural disaster” the state has ever seen.
While Matthew 25: Ministries is gathering aid to send to survivors, Ohio Department of Natural Resources officials are preparing for the state’s burn ban season.
The death toll continued to rise as wildfires ripped through Hawaii. Dozens of lives were claimed and thousands of people were displaced. According to a news release from Maui County, there were at least 55 confirmed deaths.
As of Thursday night, nearly 11,000 people were without power and didn’t have access to the internet or radio network. Officials were still gathering an idea of how many people were missing. According to the Hawaii Tourism Authority, 14,000 visitors were flown out of the island on Wednesday and another 14,500 were transported Thursday evening.
Wildfires are common when temperatures are extremely hot and dry, but firefighters can usually deploy various resources to contain the fire. An expert from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources said the fires in Maui were hard to contain for a few reasons.
“A lot of the time, they [firefighters] use helicopters and airplane support to help the firefighters on the ground,” said Tom Shuman with the ODNR Division of Forestry. “The winds were so strong that they couldn’t put any aviation up in the air, so it really made their job difficult and when you’re talking an 80- and 90-mile-an-hour winds, whatever the cases that they had, it’s just really not safe to be in those conditions for the firefighters, let alone the people, so it just it was kind of a worst-case scenario that happened.”
The Maui wildfires weren’t the first we’ve seen this summer. Ohio started the summer with air quality concerns because of the fires in Canada, and Texas had already seen fires because of high temperatures. Shuman said wildfires can affect Ohioans.
“They get dry in the summertime because they don’t get rain, so even their trees start to dry out to where they can actually burn,” said Shuman. “Their grasses go dormant in the summertime, so that’s why normally we’re seeing fires when it’s dead and dry.”
Ohio’s burn ban season starts in October and goes through November. Ohioans cannot burn fires of any sort from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. during those months.
Matthew 25: Ministries, based here in Ohio, sent aid to Hawaii. They accepted monetary donations and asked for donations of cases of bottled water, cleaning supplies, first-aid items, paper products and baby supplies.
To donate money or arrange a drop off, click here.
