AccuWeather: Damage and Economic Loss from Wildfires in Hawaii $8B to $10B

AccuWeather’s preliminarily estimate of the total damage and economic loss from the wildfires burning in Hawaii is from $8 billion to 10 billion. The worst of the fires hit the Island of Maui, with the Lahaina area especially hard hit.

Fires also continue to burn on parts of the Big Island.

“This will have a dramatic effect on not only residents, their homes, and their businesses but also a dramatic impact on tourism going forward,” an AccuWeather release states.

This estimate is preliminary, the weather service noted.

Maui’s economy is heavily reliant on tourism, with some estimating it accounts for 75% of the revenue generated on the island. Communications and power infrastructure have also been severely affected by the disaster, leaving thousands without means to contact emergency services or their loved ones.

“The extent of the devastation calls for a long and challenging recovery process that will require the collective efforts of the community and support from authorities,” the AccuWeather release states.

As of Thursday, at least 36 people have died, thousands have been evacuated to shelters, and hundreds of buildings have been destroyed.

AccuWeather’s damage estimate employs independent methods to evaluate direct and indirect impacts of the storm, which includes both insured and uninsured losses, and is based on a variety of sources, statistics, and techniques AccuWeather uses to estimate the damage to property, job and wage losses, crops, infrastructure damage, interruption of the supply chain, auxiliary business losses and flight delays or cancellations.

The estimate also accounts for the costs of evacuations, relocations, emergency management, and the government expenses for cleanup operations, and it includes the long-term effect on business logistics, transportation, tourism as well as the tail health effects and the medical and other expenses of yet unreported deaths and injuries, according to AccuWeather.