Hawaiian Electric has announced plans to expand its efforts to prevent wildfires in the future.
They include solutions such as managing vegetation near power lines, utilizing fire-resistant equipment and using underground lines.
The utility is also considering a Public Safety Power Shutoff program that can be used right before extreme weather events.
Hawaiian Electric spokesperson Darren Pai said it would be a measure of last resort.
“In the event of an extreme weather event, under red flag conditions and in areas where you've got a risk of wildfire, a power shutoff program in certain areas could be implemented as an additional means to reduce the risk of a wildfire,” he said.
“This would be in addition to other other steps that we have implemented or already are in the process of working on,” Pai added.
The utility’s solutions are part of its Wildfire Safety Strategy, which it has been developing since 2019. The three-phase strategy involves immediate to long-term solutions.
Immediate solutions include deploying “spotters” in at-risk locations during red flag warnings to watch for possible fires and having power lines automatically shut off during faults or disturbances.
Longer-term solutions include better ways to inspect equipment, grid resilience work and installing equipment to detect faults or weather issues.
They also include wildfire-focused weather forecasting, the use of covered and underground power lines, and plans to seek federal funding for wildfire prevention programs.
The utility’s announcement came last week, after recent wildfires in the state and amid the increasing threat of fires in the future — namely the deadly Lāhainā fires in August.
A downed power line ignited dry grass in Lāhainā the morning of Aug. 8, the day the town was devastated by a later fire that killed at least 99 people.
Extreme winds at the time fueled the fire and others on Maui and the Big Island. High winds began whipping across the state again last week, and fire crews are currently fighting a fire in the Mililani area that has burned about 1,350 acres.
“With the events of Aug. 8 fresh in our minds, safety remains our top priority, and as drought conditions continue, Hawai‘i is seeing heightened risks for wildfires across the state, as we have seen this week with a fire near Mililani,” Jim Alberts, Hawaiian Electric’s senior vice president and chief operations officer, said in a statement.
