LAHAINA (KHON) — Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez said the state will release its initial timeline of the Lahaina fire on April 17.
The Fire Safety Research Institute was hired by the AG’s office to investigate the timeline of events on Aug. 8, 2023, or Phase 1 of the report.
AG Lopez said FSRI ran into delays.
In an email to NewsNation affiliate KHON, the AG’s team said FSRI was seeking documents and data, including photos, video, and audio recordings; along with interviews with key Maui County personnel who worked during those first three days.
“Initial requests for information were made directly by FSRI investigators. The initial responses from the county were often slow and yielded less information than expected. To confirm that all responsive documents were being provided in response to these requests, the issuance of the initial three subpoenas by the Department of the Attorney General was deemed necessary. Afterward, the County of Maui stated that it would require subpoenas for subsequent document productions and interviews with any County of Maui personnel,” the email stated.
Attorney General Lopez said on Monday that FSRI has all the information needed to develop a timeline and conduct an analysis of what happened. The AG’s office said:
The purpose of this investigation is to make sure that this tragedy never happens again, period.
Former Attorney General Doug Chin said the public must remember that the state and four counties are all different entities.
“One reason why the county might be saying we want subpoenas for everything could be because the state and county aren’t getting along, that’s one possibility. Another possibility is that when you have a subpoena you’re introducing a formal process that ultimately, if there’s a disagreement or a problem, a judge will be able to look at this and decide whether the production of documents is satisfactory or if there needs to be more or whether the county doesn’t have to produce so much, is all under the supervision of a judge,” Chin explained.
The AG’s office said it issued 64 subpoenas to Maui County since November, including 11 subpoenas for documents from Maui Police, Maui Fire and Public Safety, Maui Emergency Management Agency, Maui Public Works, Maui Water Supply, and the Finance Department.
The AG also issued 53 subpoenas to interview Maui Police officers, Maui dispatchers, and MEMA workers.
“They want to know as much as possible about the events of that day, where were people, where were the different Maui county employees,” explained Chin.
“Whether it was law enforcement or the emergency management officials or other players involved in Aug. 8, 2023 those are going to be the people they want to interview and the documents they wrote up that day is what the state is going to want to look at because those are present in time contemporaneous recollections of what was going on that day.”
Chin said they can subpoena texts, social media posts, and other types of communication from that day.
“Anytime you have a subpoena process what that does is create a formality in the investigation that I think in this case the state and county probably want,” Chin explained.
“That way if there is any pushback on ‘why are you subpoenaing so many people’ or ‘why are you asking for so many documents’ or ‘we’re going to produce these documents and not these documents to you because they’re privileged,’ all of those can be resolved by a judge if the two parties, the state and the county, can’t agree with each other.”
He said the downside of the formal subpoena process is that it takes time.
The Camp Fire which destroyed the town of Paradise, California claimed 85 lives.
KHON reached out to the Butte County District Attorney who said they had to issue hundreds of subpoenas to PG&E employees and the whole process took about one year.
The list of subpoenas for the AG’s Phase 1 investigation, did not include Hawaiian Electric, which has touted transparency.
“We have fully cooperated with the attorney general’s investigation and have not received any subpoenas,” HECO said in a statement.
Maui County said in an email on Monday afternoon that it shares the AG’s goal of comprehensively analyzing the timeline of the August 2023 utility-caused fires, a task that is simultaneously being completed by the County of Maui Fire Department, by the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and by dozens of independent experts in the ongoing lawsuits related to the fires.
FILE – The hall of historic Waiola Church in Lahaina and nearby Lahaina Hongwanji Mission are engulfed in flames along Wainee Street on Aug. 8, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. Communities still reeling from climate-fueled storms and other natural disasters, from the wildfires in Maui to severe flooding in New England, fear a federal government shutdown will delay needed disaster relief.(Matthew Thayer/The Maui News via AP, File) 
FILE – The hall of historic Waiola Church in Lahaina and nearby Lahaina Hongwanji Mission are engulfed in flames along Wainee Street on Aug. 8, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. Soon after Lahaina Hongwanji Mission burned in a wildfire that decimated much of the historic coastal town, the Japanese Buddhist temple’s resident minister was desperate to go back and see what remained. Now, he’s more hesitant. The Rev. Ai Hironaka and other Lahaina residents are grappling with a range of feelings as Maui authorities plan to begin allowing them back into what has become known as the “burn zone.” (Matthew Thayer/The Maui News via AP, File) 
FILE – A man walks through wildfire wreckage in Lahaina, Hawaii, Aug. 11, 2023. Federal authorities have started removing hazardous materials from the Maui wildfires and laying the groundwork to dispose of burnt cars, buildings and other debris. The hazardous materials, including oil, solvent and batteries, are being shipped to the West Coast while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers works with local officials to develop a plan to dispose of an estimated 400,000 to 700,000 tons of debris on the island. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File) 
FILE – A general view shows the aftermath of a wildfire in Lahaina, Hawaii, Monday, Aug. 21, 2023. Hawaii’s top public utility officials and the president of Hawaiian Electric are expected to testify Thursday, Sept. 28, in a congressional hearing about the role the electrical grid played in last month’s deadly Maui wildfire. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File) 
FILE – Workers harvest a pineapple field in Maui, Hawaii, on March 5, 2002. Filipinos began arriving in Hawaii more than a century ago to labor on sugarcane and pineapple plantations. In 2023, they account for the second-largest ethnic group on Maui, with nearly 48,000 island residents tracing their roots to the Philippines, 5,000 of them in Lahaina — about 40% of the town’s population before the fire. (Amanda Cowan/The Maui News via AP, File) 
CORRECTS SPELLING OF LAST NAME TO VIERRA INSTEAD OF VERA – Leola Vierra walks through the remains of her home for the first time, Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. The Vierras are among the couple dozen residents who are able to return to their property in Zone 1-C following August’s deadly wildfire. Authorities in Maui strongly encouraged homeowners to wear protective gear provided by nonprofit groups when visiting their properties to protect against asbestos, lead and other toxic remains of the wildfire. (AP Photo/Mengshin Lin)
The county pointed out that MPD had completed its After Action Report in which a timeline was given.
Maui County said it’s delivered over thirty different productions of documents (containing nearly 20,000 distinct files, including almost 8,000 video and audio files, 48,000 pages, and over 118 gigabytes of data) and has made its workers, directors, deputies, and employees available for over 150 technical interviews and numerous site visits into and around the affected areas.
“The County has shown and continues to show great respect for the Department’s investigative authority in this matter,” the email stated.
Maui officials added, “Of course, the County also appreciates the Department’s [Attorney General] mutual respect for the realities faced by a significant number of County personnel, who must continue maintaining the operations of County infrastructure and systems while they also grieve, re-orient their lives, and recover physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually from the fires. To this end, subpoenas were requested for personnel testimony following multiple instances of FSRI arriving to interview County personnel, including first responders, without notice, coordination, or legal representation. In fact, there were several occasions where such interviews occurred during work hours and were interrupted by emergencies requiring the attention of County personnel, only to have FSRI waiting for them upon their return.”
Maui County said document subpoenas were requested to organize and track FSRI’s “dozens of requests, many of which FSRI communicated directly to County personnel despite the County’s repeated requests to go through Corporation Counsel.”
The e-mail added that the document subpoenas have “greatly assisted in managing FSRI’s more than 150 informal and unorganized document requests and has allowed County personnel to better track the progress of production for each. It has also helped the County identify multiple instances of repeated requests or requests for information that had already been provided.”
“Finally, the County has provided to FSRI all documents that have been produced by the County in response to dozens of UIPA requests from the public.
The County pursuant to the ongoing litigation is in the process of disclosing both the UIPA production and the FSRI production to all parties in the ongoing litigation—including hundreds of claimants and their attorneys and experts. The County is in the process of complying with its discovery obligations with respect to that order.”
The FSRI told KHON it conducts advanced fire science research to advance fire safety knowledge and address the world’s unresolved risks and emerging dangers and works in collaboration with its international network of partners.
FSRI said the Phase One report will analyze how the fire incident unfolded, based on science, during the first 24 to 72 hours of the fire and its aftermath, and includes a comprehensive timeline of events. The analysis will be included in Phase Two.
“Since the investigation is ongoing, FSRI cannot provide additional details before the Phase One report is released on April 17,” the e-mail stated.
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