It was the firestorm that wildfire consultants and residents on Maui had warned about for years — a blaze fueled by hurricane winds roaring by untamed grasses and right into a 13,000-person coastal city with few methods in or out. Local officers had launched plan after plan acknowledging that wildfire was all however sure.

But when the nightmare fireplace erupted throughout Lahaina on Aug. 8, killing at the very least 114 folks and presumably scores extra, methods that had been put in place to sound the alarm and convey folks to security collapsed, residents and consultants mentioned.

Cellphone websites have been burned and misplaced energy, leaving folks unable to speak or obtain emergency alerts. Two foremost roads offering escape routes out of city have been closed due to flames and downed energy traces, funneling evacuees into an inferno of gridlock alongside a coastal street the place many burned inside their vehicles. Powerful emergency sirens by no means made a sound. Fire hoses nearly ran dry.

And whereas fireplace departments and wildfire-preparedness teams have lengthy urged folks in fire-prone areas like West Maui to be prepared and depart early, different recommendation from the authorities was far much less concrete. The state of Hawaii’s own guide for the way folks ought to reply to hurricanes, tsunamis and different disasters doesn’t embody any course on what to do in a wildfire.

Nearly two weeks later, as President Biden arrives in Hawaii on Monday to tour the scene of the deadliest American wildfire in a century, the preliminary shock and grief are giving approach to anger and questions in regards to the authorities’s planning and response, most importantly why communications round Lahaina failed so badly, and whether or not earlier, extra aggressive evacuation measures may have prevented a number of the deaths.

Half of all addresses within the contiguous United States face some wildfire risk, which means that tens of hundreds of thousands of lives could also be weak to a number of the similar failures that engulfed Lahaina: An absence of early evacuations and unpracticed escape plans. Communications networks crippled by flames, energy outages and fire-spewing winds. Limited evacuation routes that clog with folks fleeing when it’s already too late.

Hawaii’s lawyer common has ordered an out of doors investigation into the response by county and state officers; Maui County’s mayor, Richard T. Bissen Jr., has confronted persistent questions from residents and the news media in regards to the county’s response; and Maui’s emergency administration director resigned last week.

At a news convention on Friday, Mr. Bissen mentioned: “I think we could always do more. There’s so many things, but I think the right thing to do is for us to cooperate with the investigative agencies, anyone who is going to review this.”

Mr. Bissen mentioned that roads had been blocked each by downed energy traces — he mentioned he was instructed that 29 energy traces toppled over in the course of the fireplace — and by vehicles that have been left behind as folks fled on foot.

Elizabeth Pickett, co-executive director of the nonprofit Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, cautioned towards blaming the devastation in Lahaina solely on emergency-management selections in the midst of a firestorm.

“I hear, ‘Emergency management bungled the response, alarms should have gone off,’” she mentioned. “All these things — they’re pieces. But it’s not telling the whole story of how it got so bad.”

She mentioned Hawaii’s wildfire danger has been rising after years of underinvestment in fireplace departments and fireplace prevention. She mentioned that there have been not sufficient entry roads for firefighters or evacuation routes in subdivisions, and that landowners weren’t compelled to handle the invasive grasses that turn out to be tinder for fires.

“There’s barely enough resources at the Fire Department to do code enforcement,” Ms. Pickett mentioned. “No one with power has heard us.”

Maui has about 60 to 70 firefighters working at anybody time, and they’re accountable for three islands. Whether Maui had sufficient firefighters is more likely to be a part of the inquiries being performed by the state.

Inside the catastrophe zone that’s central Lahaina lies what some name the grim results of failing to deal with wildfire hazard: a panorama of destruction starting on the hillsides and chopping by neighborhoods and enterprise districts proper as much as the ocean and past. Floating within the harbor are burned boats bobbing within the sea. Rebuilding is anticipated to price greater than $5 billion.

Only a number of buildings are nonetheless standing: a church; a red-roofed residence on Front Street that overlooks the ocean; a McDonald’s that was broken however not destroyed. The one medical clinic is sort of solely razed; a department of First Hawaiian Bank is now principally rubble aside from a charred A.T.M. and a big vault. At one intersection on Lahainaluna Road, close to the place the fireplace is believed to have began, is the charred husk of a fireplace truck.

Over the weekend, searchers wearing hazmat fits sifted by particles in search of human stays, employees with the electrical firm cleared downed energy traces that have been in every single place, and specialists positioned boundaries round sewage grates to cease poisonous waste from reaching the ocean. The police have been getting ready to lock down the world prematurely of Mr. Biden’s go to on Monday.

Residents have mentioned that there was no organized evacuation, and that that they had by no means been skilled on find out how to depart city within the occasion of a fast-moving wildfire. Some residents obtained textual content message alerts about an emergency, however others didn’t. And some mentioned that the smoke was so thick and darkish that they might not determine which course to flee.

J.D. Sheveland, 58, who owns Maui Coffee Company, acquired caught in a standstill line of vehicles snaking out of city alongside Front Street beside the ocean. The wider Honoapiilani Highway was impassable due to downed dwell energy traces.

He by no means heard cops or firefighters on loudspeakers urging folks to evacuate.

“Once it turned into a firestorm, it was just too late,” he mentioned. “No evacuation would have helped.”

In the aftermath of the fireplace, one of many selections being scrutinized has been why native authorities didn’t activate the system of warning sirens that has extra generally been utilized in Hawaii to warn residents of a tsunami risk.

The absence of the sirens was vital as a result of so many individuals had no cell service to alert them to the rising risk within the parched hills above Lahaina. Even earlier than the fireplace erupted, many individuals round Lahaina mentioned that they had not been in a position to make calls or use their telephones for a lot of the day due to ferocious winds and energy outages.

The fireplace triggered a “catastrophic communications failure” because it burned by neighborhoods and downtown later that afternoon, State Senator Angus McKelvey mentioned.

Fiber optic cables melted within the intense warmth, he mentioned, leaving folks unable to let others know in regards to the fireplace, name for assist or obtain emergency alerts from the county.

“Nobody could communicate with anybody on any level,” Mr. McKelvey, a Democrat, mentioned.

Before he stepped down as director of Maui’s emergency administration company, Herman Andaya defended his determination to not sound the sirens, saying at a news convention that folks might need thought that there was a tsunami and run inland into the fires. Mr. Andaya resigned on Thursday, citing well being causes.

The state of Hawaii, nevertheless, has described the sirens, which it says are a part of the biggest out of doors warning system on the earth, as a approach to alert residents to quite a lot of risks, like tsunamis, floods, wildfires and terrorist threats.

“I believe it’s called an all-hazards warning system,” Josh Stanbro, the previous chief resilience officer of Honolulu, mentioned.

“It’s to bring your attention that something’s going on and to get to a TV or radio and figure out how you can be part of the community response,” he added.

Mr. Stanbro emphasised that he didn’t know sufficient in regards to the particulars of the response to second-guess any selections made on Maui.

In the long run, the siren system is more likely to turn out to be an ordinary function of wildfire response in Hawaii.

Before the inferno consumed Lahaina, the deadliest wildfire in America in additional than a century was the Camp fireplace, which devastated the Northern California city of Paradise. Five years later, Paradise is putting in a siren system, on the urging of residents.

In California, regulators now require wi-fi carriers to have backup energy sources for his or her cell towers in areas at excessive danger for wildfires, a measure imposed after residents didn’t obtain emergency alerts throughout a number of devastating fires in recent times, together with the Camp fireplace.

In fire-prone Australia, after the Black Saturday bush fires of 2009 that killed 173 folks and incinerated whole cities, the federal government expanded its warning system and aimed to maneuver sooner in telling folks to evacuate.

Several states in Australia have additionally developed native emergency apps — together with one referred to as Fires Near Me — that assist folks monitor hazard early and that will also be used to determine customers’ areas within the case of a catastrophe.

Perhaps most essential, in keeping with many fireplace officers, the nation has leaned extra closely on schooling, involving folks in volunteer fireplace and emergency response groups in order that they are going to be extra concerned when catastrophe strikes.

But many fireplace officers in Australia warn that the size and depth of at this time’s largest fires require new expectations.

“People have this idea that someone will protect me,” mentioned Greg Mullins, who spent 50 years in fireplace administration in Australia, “but we know with climate change, on the worst days, no force on Earth can beat Mother Nature.”

Victoria Kim contributed reporting. Sheelagh McNeill contributed analysis.