Page 8 - Dry Brush News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Hawaii electric company, accusing them of starting those deadly wildfires. the company already faces numerous negligence lawsuits, but this is the first to say that their utility wires caused that blaze. nbc's steve patterson is on the ground there. what more can you tell us? >> just that, chris, that their utility caused that fire, that it was the significant wind event and messages that were ignored about the possibility of maybe deenergizing those lines that came down in the wind, in dry brush, all of this was stated by the national weather service. it was really bad weather for fire, and c...

So they can safely shut off the power. the lawsuit, 48 pages, alleges that none of that was done ahead of the fire, and that simply the warnings from the national weather service went unheard, and so when you had that wind event with the dry brush, the energized lines that it sparked and caused the fire. they're saying there's $5.5 billion worth of damages. the electric company did respond saying that they feel sort of put off by the fact that this was done before the full investigation was complete. this of course is one of now 13 lawsuits. but this is the first one, as you mentioned, to full...

>> it is not like hurricane force winds, dry brush, or red flag conditions. we saw this before, and we did not learn our lesson. that brush fire could erupt as a result of churning hurricane winds. and we underestimated the lethality, the quickness of fire. in this situation, we have got to make sure that we do better. >> cnn's gloria from honolulu, we are hearing so many traumatic stories of survival and the rescue and recovery efforts are conditioning as well. >> yes, amara, rahel, just hearing that video, hearing those people's voices and seeing the damage, in the video, and the images, it ...

During the last 100 years, the deadliest wildfires in the country have occurred in California, but Hawaii’s disaster makes ranks among some of the worst blazes of all time.

Weather. why were the fires able to take such hold? you think of california in a drought with all the dry brush. >> yeah, so i live -- maui actually has a win ward and leeward side. we have a wet side of the island and a dry side, separated by a 10,000 foot volcano, so the dry side had been in a drought. everybody thinks of the rain forest and east maui, but the dry side of the island had been in a drought for quite some time. up where i live on the volcano, it has been incredibly dry. they were telling us to limit water before this happened, and then this hurricane dora came south of us, and ...