What caused the fires in Hawaii?The experts at the NYT:«Weeds used for animal grazing»

It is not clear what the trigger was, but the flames spread thanks to invasive plants

The fires in Hawaii they were fed by hectares and hectares of uncultivated fields on which easily flammable invasive plants grew.There was a time when the island of Maui was teeming with sugar canes, which were the main crop on the island.The disposal of the last one dates back to 2016.Gradually the reeds were replaced by varieties of grazing grass from other continents, mainly Africa, which today cover almost a quarter of the surface of the archipelago.Guinea grass, lemon balm and buffalo grass.Perfect plants to feed to livestock:they grow quickly when it rains and are resistant to drought periods.And they are highly flammable, so much so that they contributed to the worst fire since 1918, which took the lives of at least 93 people on the island of Maui alone.

«They grow up to 15 centimeters a day»

The grasses “are weeds, they grow very quickly and are highly flammable,” he explained to the New York Times Melissa Chimera, coordinator of the Pacific Fire Exchange, a project based in the US archipelago that aims to improve the level of prevention and awareness of fires throughout the Pacific region.Added to this are drought and rising temperatures.Hawaii is in the midst of a trend of reduced rainfall and rising temperatures that dries out plants and makes them susceptible to fires.When it rains, grasses can grow up to 6 inches per day.The lack of prevention and the morphology of the territory, with arid lava flows alternating with immense uncultivated fields, did the rest.