Satellite imagery captured by the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday (Aug. 12), shows the Hawaiian island of Maui covered in shrouds of thick wildfire smoke. This visual was taken 4 days after the fires first broke out, because the ISS orbited some 259 miles (417 km) above the Pacific Ocean.
As of Wednesday (Aug. 16), the death toll of Hawaii’s catastrophic fires rose above 100. Shortly after confirmation of this figure, Governor Josh Green addressed the general public saying “We’re heartsick that we’ve had such loss.”
And never only is that this devastation being deeply felt and thoroughly documented all over the world — especially since it emphasizes a deadly consequence of human-driven climate change — however it’s also being recorded from space.
On the scene’s lower left, the coastal town of Lahaina is pictured. Lahaina was one in all the hardest-hit areas through the fires, seeing nearly all of its infrastructure turned to ash including monumental buildings corresponding to the historic Waiola Church and natural wonders like a 150-year-old Banyan tree.
Related: Aftermath of Hawaii’s deadly wildfire inferno revealed in gut-wrenching satellite images
Other Earth–orbiting devices managed to catch views of the tragedy as well, including NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite and Europe’s Sentinel-2 Earth-observing spacecraft. Each flew above the Hawaiian wildfires on Aug. 8 and offered gut-wrenching images of the flames, which have been named the deadliest within the state’s history.
Though a selected cause for these wildfires has yet to be announced, experts have began weighing in on what among the likely aspects are. NASA, for example, took to a press conference on Monday (Aug. 14) and suggested that local situations on Maui corresponding to abandoned sugar plantations and non-native grasses might’ve played a task – but additionally underlined that climate change most definitely is a chunk of the puzzle.
“Usually,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said through the conference, “climate change is a type of threat-multiplier for wildfires.”
On Tuesday (Aug. 15), local officials announced that the fires have mostly been contained with Lahaina seeing 85% containment and other regions seeing 100% containment. Nonetheless, as officials note, “When a hearth is 100% contained, it doesn’t mean it has been extinguished. It signifies that firefighters have the blaze fully surrounded by a fringe, inside which it will probably still burn.”
“A hearth is said ‘extinguished,’ when fire personnel consider there may be nothing left burning.”
Hundreds of Hawaiian residents were forced to flee their homes as a result of the disaster and over one thousand more are still reported as missing.