No evidence Hawaii wildfires set to create '15-minute smart cities'
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on August 15, 2023 at 22:52
- Updated on August 16, 2023 at 18:11
- 7 min read
- By Daniel FUNKE, AFP USA
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"Hawaii fires were set to land grab," says text over a video published August 12, 2023 on Facebook.
In the clip, a TikTok creator known as Tajana Truthseeker -- whom AFP previously fact-checked -- claims the blazes were intentionally set to "try and get people into 15-minute cities."
"Hawaii is very small, it has a small amount of land available -- especially for millionaires and billionaires that have houses in these areas that want to keep building," she says in the video. "So, the easiest way instead of offering people money for their homes is to just burn the entire place down and pretty much just burn people out of their area."
Similar claims have circulated elsewhere on Facebook and Instagram. In an August 11 video that spread widely on the latter platform, Matt Roeske says footage of the damage in Hawaii "sure doesn't look like a fire" but rather "like something almost exploded."
He goes on to say that media reports fail to note that in January "they had in Maui a smart city conference to turn Maui into an entire smart island -- changing everything to electric, renewables, solar panels and pushing everybody into electric vehicles. 15-minute smart cities."
Lahaina, a historic tourist town of about 12,000 people on Maui's west coast, was decimated by a raging fire in early August, leaving at least 99 dead and thousands homeless -- the deadliest US wildfire in a century. Officials say the figure is likely to rise as recovery crews with cadaver dogs work their way through hundreds of homes and burned-out vehicles.
The natural disaster inspired a cascade of conspiracy theories online, with social media users falsely claiming directed energy weapons were to blame. In fact, the NWS has said dry conditions and strong winds from nearby Hurricane Dora fueled the flames.
While authorities have not pinpointed what exactly set Maui ablaze, there is no evidence the fires were set intentionally to redesign the island to be more walkable or climate friendly.
"In the US, 90 percent of the fires are human-caused -- but intentionally as arson and everything, it's not that many," said Albert Simeoni, professor and head of the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).
"People always come with that because it's an especially unthinkable disaster ... and they want somebody to blame."
No 'smart island' connection
In his video, Roeske cites several unrelated events as evidence that the fires are linked to an effort to redesign Maui using smart technology and clean energy.
As part of this, he claims Maui has imminent plans to create "15-minute smart cities" -- conflating two separate urban design philosophies that have previously been the subject of misinformation.
The first concept, 15-minute cities, aims to provide citizens with all their essentials within a short walk from their residences. Smart cities, on the other hand, "use information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve the ways they operate," according to National Grid, an energy company operating in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Roeske, founder of the alternative health company Cultivate Elevate, which sells products billed as "superfoods," points to a call for papers (archived here) for the January 2023 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). The gathering convenes scholars from more than 60 countries and is "the longest-standing working scientific conference on information technology management in the world," according to the National Security Agency, which sponsored the event.
One of the conference mini-tracks (archived here) was titled "Smart and Connected Cities and Communities." However, while HICSS was hosted in Maui, none of the academic papers written for that cohort were about the island, instead focusing on places such as Costa Rica, Singapore and major global cities.
"Our conference isn't 'a smart city conference to turn Maui into an entire smart island,'" said Thayanan Phuaphanthong, HICSS program coordinator, in a statement emailed August 15.
Roeske also cites in his video JUMPSmartMaui, a community project (archived here) that between 2011 and 2016 helped set up electric vehicle (EV) charging stations and renewable energy infrastructure on the island.
The initiative, funded by Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, attracted 530 volunteers and concluded in February 2017. The EV charging program was retired in 2020 (archived here).
Finally, Roeske points to the September 2023 Hawaii Digital Government Summit (archived here), which he claims is aimed at "utilizing AI to govern the island."
One panel will address how governments can leverage artificial intelligence, but the description says nothing of creating smart cities. The conference will be held in Honolulu, which is located on the island of Oahu -- not Maui.
AFP reached out to Maui County for comment, but responses were not forthcoming.
What started the fires?
Officials are still investigating the cause of the Hawaii wildfires, but several experts told AFP that conditions were ripe for disaster.
John Bravender, an NWS warning coordination meteorologist based in Honolulu, said that "in addition to emergency manager briefings," the agency issued a fire weather watch and a red flag warning ahead of the blazes.
"The wildfires occurred during a period of very strong winds and low relative humidity," he said in an August 14 email. "Combined with dry vegetation due to increasing drought, all the ingredients were in place for extreme fire danger."
Other independent experts also pointed to the weather as a contributing factor.
"A lot of grass which was there is old cane sugar fields with non-native grass. And this grass in the summer gets cured and gets very dry," said Simeoni of WPI.
"So basically, you had all the conditions -- the fuel, the heat, the wind and the ignition sources -- to create a catastrophe."
Arnaud Trouve, chair of the University of Maryland's Department of Fire Protection Engineering, previously told AFP the Hawaii blazes should not be pinned on "extraordinary sources" when lightning and other natural phenomena, as well as human activities, are more often to blame. Simeoni said there have been "multiple accounts of seeing energized power lines on the ground."
A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Hawaiian Electric, the state's biggest power firm, claiming the company "inexcusably kept their power lines energized during forecasted high fire danger conditions."
"By failing to shut off the power during these dangerous fire conditions, defendants caused loss of life, serious injuries, destruction of hundreds of homes and businesses, displacement of thousands of people and damage to many of Hawaii's historic and cultural sites," the lawsuit says (archived here).
Hawaiian Electric CEO Shelee Kimura said during an August 14 news conference (archived here) that the company does not shut off power during fire conditions -- as is sometimes done in California -- in part because electricity is needed for water pumps. The firm's stock plunged over concerns about potential liability from the wildfires.
AFP has debunked misinformation about past wildfires here.
August 16, 2023 This article was updated in the 17th paragraph to add a statement from the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
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