MAUI, HAWAII: At least 53 people have died in the Maui wildfires, with the death toll anticipated to grow, and the resort town of Lahaina has been devastated causing billions of dollars in damage that will take many years to repair.
The blaze that left hundreds of people homeless and up to 1,000 buildings in ashes in Lahaina, according to Governor Josh Green, was the biggest natural disaster to ever strike the state.
Lahaina's reconstruction will take "many years," Green predicted during a press conference as authorities started to develop a strategy for finding new housing for the homeless in resort hotels and vacation rentals.
"It will be a new Lahaina that Maui builds in its own image with its own values," Green said of the city, which welcomes 2 million tourists annually, or around 80% of the island's visitors, as per REUTERS.
The swiftly spreading conflagration, which began on Tuesday, moved from the brush outside of town and wreaked havoc on the ancient city of Lahaina, which served as the former seat of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
What caused the Maui wildfire?
When the flames started, a large portion of Hawaii was under a red flag fire risk warning, but its exact origin is still a mystery.
There was a claim that the catastrophe that devastated parts of the Hawaiian island of Maui was caused by a "direct energy weapon." But it is unproven.
As dramatic first-person descriptions and images of the fire circulated on social media, suspicions, and conspiracy theories about what caused it proliferated.
A number of accounts on the X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook proposed that the fires must have been started by a so-called "direct energy weapon, borrowing a conspiracy theory that first surfaced during the 2020–21 California wildfires.
A user with the X handle @OrranteMaria claimed, " I know familiar like California fires. Direct energy weapon." Another user wrote, "Maui looks like a direct energy weapon attack imo." "This is a direct energy weapon, same as what happened in Paradise CA," said another.
What is a Directed Energy Weapon?
DEWs are weapons that use focused electromagnetic energy to attack enemy forces and assets. High-energy lasers and other high-power electromagnetics, such as millimeter wave and high-power microwave weapons, are examples of these weapons, as per US Government Accountability Office.
Social media users have been posting pictures of what looked to be a beam of light coming down from the sky and igniting as it hit the ground.
The image was purported to have been taken on Maui in 2023 to demonstrate the "direct energy weapon" in action, but it has really been circulating online since at least January 2018 and has nothing to do with lasers or flames.
As Snopes noted in 2018, the image is only one of many that show a controlled fire that took place in January at an Ohio oil refinery. The apparent "beam of light" shown in the images is actually a "light pillar," a cold-weather optical occurrence.
Although no official cause(s) of the 2023 Maui wildfires have been identified, extreme weather conditions undoubtedly played a role, and aside from the routine possibility of human carelessness or arson, there is no compelling reason to propose a non-natural explanation for the disaster.
Stew Peters shredded for spreading fake theories
The Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs) which are rumored to be being deployed in Hawaii are "powerful enough to set the Pacific Ocean on fire," according to American far-right web personality Stew Peters who is also reportedly best known for promoting COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories.
He is currently under criticism for peddling false information. A user replied, "You should change your last name to Pitter." Another user said, "It's called debris from all the burned boats that were in the harbor."
Yet another user wrote, "Shill Peters using a Space X launch from 2018 as photoshop propaganda." "This dude is a patient," commented another. "This is irresponsible posting of lies," wrote one more user.
