Maui officials said text alerts were sent out, but it’s unclear how many people received them (power and cellular disruptions may have prevented residents from getting these alerts). Some tourists in Lahaina have said that at 4:17 p.m., there was an emergency alert to their cellphones for the first time informing them of the fire. Many local residents have said that they didn’t know the flames were approaching until the fire was nearby. We know from New York Times reporting that by 5:19 p.m. the fire had reached the waterfront, and that by 5:33 people were seeking shelter in the water.

If the text alerts were sent out at 4:17 p.m., that was at least 47 minutes too late. It appears that the evacuation order for the entire area was not issued when the road was closed or soon after. Wasn’t anyone thinking of the possibility of a runaway fire with no air support because of strong winds? According to a Facebook post by the County of Maui, a fire first reported at 6:37 a.m. east of Lahaina on the same day prompted evacuation orders in that area three minutes later.

Fires spread at rates dependent on vegetation, slope and wind conditions, but the way this one appears to have spread from the road to the beach was not an anomaly. In Mati, Greece, in 2018, a fire took about half an hour to cover one-half mile. The conditions there were similar to Maui’s, with very strong winds descending from the local mountains and pushing the fire forward. In Mati, there was no warning; 104 people died and roughly another 800 were trapped by the beach and had to be evacuated from the water. With an alert system, those lives might not have been lost. It was another tragedy that could have been prevented.

Scientists have warned time and again that we have yet to see the end of fires like the ones in Lahaina and Mati as climate change and extreme weather create riskier conditions. But it is unreasonable to expect any single state or local fire service to be able to mobilize the resources to battle a fire without help from the outside world. What’s worse, these incidents often happen simultaneously. On Maui alone, firefighters were battling fires near Makawao and Kula when the Lahaina fire erupted, leaving the ranks depleted.

Islands are at a particular disadvantage because of their insularity: Reinforcements have to be flown in and may take too long to arrive. But there is a better way. Europe has had some success in recent years prepositioning firefighters in high-risk areas, like the Greek islands, during the hottest and driest summer months. Hiring seasonal firefighters has also helped some communities there and elsewhere prepare. Hawaii, with help from the federal government, could improve its firefighting resources in these ways, too.