Unshared Wildfire Plan in Hawaii Only Raises Questions

Hawaiian Electric’s chief executive reassured a congressional committee last week that the utility has a major wildfire mitigation plan in place, one that was completed in January after four years of development. Shelee Kimura’s testimony, and the document, have raised a series of questions from regulators, including, “Why didn’t we know this?” The document wasn’t shared with state power regulators until last week and wasn’t officially filed until this week, the Wall Street Journal reports. When they finally read it, regulators and other experts were not impressed with the plan, which relies heavily on another state’s experience and uses Wikipedia as a source.

Kimura said Hawaiian Electric looked at similar plans used by utilities in California, and the 75-page plan seems to mostly look at how the utility’s approach to fire risk compares to its counterparts in California, per the Journal, which notes those California plans tend to run 1,000 pages. Experts say Hawaiian Electric’s includes no full review of specific factors that could cause wildfires, though it does include a graphic showing the role of fuel, oxygen, and heat in starting a wildfire, with the information credited to Wikipedia. “There’s not really a thorough accounting, at all, of risk,” said Michael Wara of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University. “What’s missing in this analysis is any real evaluation of the probability of ignition.”

The utility told state regulators in a filing this week that it doesn’t have enough insurance to repair its infrastructure damaged in the August wildfire in Maui—or to reimburse victims. Should Hawaiian Electric be found liable for starting the fire, it could face at least $5 billion in damage claims, per the Washington Post. The filing put its annual general liability insurance coverage at $165 million. A California wildfire attorney was critical of the job Hawaiian Electric did in analyzing its risks when obtaining insurance. “I read that $165 million and the only thought I had was how irresponsible this was,” Mike Kelly said. “Someone was not doing their job.” (Read more Hawaii stories.)