The first movies confirmed residents fleeing by partitions of fireside, frantically attempting to flee a catastrophe that caught lots of them off guard. Then got here studies of individuals leaping into the Pacific Ocean as flames engulfed Lahaina, a historic seaside city on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

The scenes had been paying homage to a few of California’s most horrific wildfires. When the Camp fire eviscerated the city of Paradise in 2018, residents had little time to flee an inferno propelled by excessive winds. And throughout the wine country fires in 2017, some determined individuals jumped into their swimming pools to flee the flames.

We gained’t know the total scope of the catastrophe in Hawaii for days. Officials are nonetheless assessing the scenario and offering restricted updates, each seemingly extra horrific than the final. As of Friday morning, the official demise toll had risen to 55, and Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii and different officers had been saying it might most likely surpass the toll from the 1960 tsunami, which took 61 lives on the Big Island. The governor known as the Maui fires “likely the largest natural disaster in Hawaii state history.”

California has tried to be taught from its wildfires. But even with a long time of expertise, the state braces every year for pure disasters in contrast to any earlier than, as local weather change takes maintain.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday dispatched greater than a dozen search-and-rescue and emergency employees to Maui who’re skilled in finding survivors and in figuring out stays. The interstate help is a reminder of how emergency preparedness varies from state to state.

“Maui has a lot of challenges that are unique to the geographic area, and that are different from what we experience in California,” Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, mentioned in an interview.

For starters, Hawaii’s emergency response shouldn’t be as geared for hearth as it’s for, say, intense rain, Ferguson famous. Tens of 1000’s of state and native firefighters are on fixed alert in California, however Hawaii, a largely rural state, has a much smaller inhabitants and much fewer emergency medical employees.

Mutual support and firefighting tools is far much less accessible than on the mainland, he added. “Honolulu can’t just drive extra fire trucks over if Maui needs them,” Ferguson mentioned.

California has realized the onerous method how you can warn residents when excessive winds are forecast throughout the hearth season, to allow them to be alert and able to evacuate. Residents have come to grasp what red-flag alerts imply on breezy days. Utilities now reduce off energy preemptively to cut back the chance that downed traces will spark new blazes.

Getting the phrase out a couple of hearth menace is tougher in locations like Maui, the place communications may be spotty and the inhabitants swells with 1000’s of vacationing guests. And evacuation is troublesome anyplace there is just one main escape route.

Maui has a particular place within the hearts of many Californians. Some go to their family members on the island every year. Others contemplate Maui, a five-hour flight away, to be their favourite vacationer vacation spot, and go there for honeymoons, anniversaries and household reunions.

Now, some will go there to assist residents get better.

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Where we’re touring

Today’s tip comes from Kim Bassett, who recommends one of many coolest museums in Los Angeles:

“While I was hunting for museums during a recent Los Angeles visit, a serendipitous Google search surfaced the Museum of Jurassic Technology. After the blockbuster La Brea Tar Pits and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, a visit to the Jurassic felt like an art house animation excavated from a forgotten genius’s attic. It is small, closely curated and indescribably singular, a cocktail of the unbelievably true and playfully suspicious.

We took in a survey of early animal-based folk remedies and a homage to the dogs of the early Soviet space program. The museum’s curios and narratives weave a deliberate tension between awe and amazement, knowing and doubting. Even the ‘Jurassic’ in its name doesn’t refer to a time period or a (real) place; rather, it seems a state of credulous wonder. While Los Angeles’s other museums were fascinating, the M.J.T. was undoubtedly the most wondrous.”

Tell us about your favourite locations to go to in California. Email your recommendations to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We’ll be sharing extra in upcoming editions of the publication.

Tell us

Quite a lot of Los Angeles landmarks are turning 100 this year, together with the Hollywood signal, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Biltmore Hotel in downtown.

Do you might have any favourite recollections of those establishments? Email a number of sentences to CAtoday@nytimes.com, and please embrace your title and town the place you reside.