Hawaii's attorney general will release a 400-plus-page report Wednesday on how government agencies responded to the devastating Lahaina fire.
HNN Investigates has learned the report doesn't find fault with first responders and could help dispel false information on social media.
State Attorney General Anne Lopez and experts from the Fire Safety Research Institute have privately briefed government officials about what her long-awaited report has found.
It doesn't get into how the fire started, but is extremely detailed about how agencies responded — and the conditions that made the fire so deadly.
Some HNN talked to are frustrated that the probe didn't go into what might have sparked the fire. That's being left to the Maui Fire Department and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
But the officials were impressed by the amount of information coming out — and the AG's openness. Those who spoke did so on condition of anonymity because the briefings were behind closed doors.
They said along with doing scores of interviews, investigators examined official video — like body-worn cameras — as well as social media posts and data from hundreds of communications.
The findings apparently confirm that police and fire fighters responded as best as they could to save lives. And the data and could dispel concerns expressed soon after the disaster that confused police directed people into fatal gridlock.
The report says Lahaina fits the category of a "wildfire-initiated urban conflagration," in which winds drive flames through subdivisions and commercial districts, which burn with uncontrollable speed and power.
The briefing gave the impression that once ignited, the fire — leaping from structure to structure — could not have been stopped by any number of firefighters or type of equipment.
Several mentioned the information from Maui County seemed less than fully transparent — after the county demanded subpoenas for employees and had attorneys present for their interviews.
Some privately speculated that the data will be helpful in lawsuits against government agencies that didn't respond to warnings of the high fire danger due to expected high winds and drought and allowed excessive overgrowth on private and government land, like highway rights-of-way.
The next stage of the Attorney General's report, in about six months, will do more to analyze what can be learned from the facts. Those at the briefing said the AG plans to release all the data, potentially even in spreadsheets that can be analyzed independently.