Hawaii Fire Map: Track Hawaii Wildfires Live in 2026

A Hawaii fire map fuses official incident records, NASA satellite heat detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts into one view of the islands, where roughly 0.5% of the land burns every year. This page explains how the state actually burns, what happened at Lahaina, and how to follow an incident today.

What does a Hawaii fire map show right now?

A Hawaii fire map layers four kinds of information: agency incident reports, mapped perimeters, satellite thermal detections and active National Weather Service fire-weather alerts. In a state with no single unified wildland fire department, reading all four together matters more than it does almost anywhere else in the country.

Incident records come from whichever agency has jurisdiction over the land where a fire starts: a county fire department, the state's Division of Forestry and Wildlife, or a federal installation. They carry the numbers people quote — acres, containment, cause — but they update only when someone files a report, not continuously.

Satellite detections move faster and matter more in Hawaii than in most states, because the islands sit far from mainland dispatch centers. NASA's MODIS and VIIRS instruments and NOAA's GOES satellites report heat within minutes to a few hours. On the live map, each detection carries a fire probability tier that blends whether an official record is linked, how fresh the perimeter is, and how recent the satellite heat is.

When is Hawaii's wildfire season?

Hawaii does not have a wildfire season with defined start and end dates the way most mainland states do. The Honolulu Fire Department states plainly that "wildland fire season is all year long due to our consistently, warm climate," and county fire departments across the islands respond to brush fires in every calendar month.

What varies is not whether fire can start but how fast it can spread. Leeward (dry, western and southern) sides of each island cure grass fuel for weeks at a time between rain events, and drought years compound that curing. The state has effectively been under an active wildfire emergency since the Lahaina fire: the Governor's Office has issued a Proclamation Relating to Wildfires and renewed it repeatedly, reaching a twenty-eighth proclamation by January 2026, citing continued statewide drought and a string of fires on four different islands since 2023.

That proclamation record is itself a rough calendar of the state's recent fire activity: a fire near Mililani Mauka on Oahu in October 2023, a roughly 500-acre fire near Crater Road in upcountry Maui in July 2024, and two fires in west Kauai that same month.

A fast-moving fire near Hanapepe and another near Kokee Road followed later in July 2024, then a fire that forced evacuations in Maui's Kahikinui area in June 2025, and a major fire in the Maili area of West Oahu in July 2025 that required evacuating hundreds of homes.

That 0.5% figure is not a small number by national standards. The Pacific Fire Exchange, a regional research and outreach network, reports that the share of land burned per year in Hawaii equals or exceeds every other US state, including the fire-prone West, even though Hawaii's total land area is tiny by comparison.

Which agencies fight fires in Hawaii?

No single agency runs wildland firefighting statewide. The Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW), part of the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), is the primary responder on the roughly 26% of Hawaii's land that it manages directly, and co-responds under mutual aid agreements on another 32%, giving it a role in fire response across close to 60% of the state.

DOFAW's own staff are foresters, biologists and land managers rather than full-time wildland firefighters; firefighting is one of several duties they perform. The four county fire departments — Honolulu, Maui, Hawaii and Kauai — carry the rest of the load, including nearly all structure protection, and each county's civil defense or emergency management agency issues evacuation orders.

State agency

Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW), Department of Land and Natural Resources

County response

Honolulu Fire Department, Maui Fire Department, Hawaii Fire Department, Kauai Fire Department

Geographic coordination

Northern California Geographic Area Coordination Center (North Ops), which covers Hawaii for mobilization and mutual aid

Fire-weather forecasts

NWS Forecast Office Honolulu, issued on an island-by-island basis

Because Hawaii sits outside the contiguous 48-state coordination structure, the National Interagency Coordination Center's Northern California Geographic Area Coordination Center in Redding handles Hawaii's mobilization and mutual aid requests, according to NIFC's own geographic area listing. That distance shapes how quickly mainland crews and aircraft can reinforce an island fire.

Where do Hawaii wildfires usually burn?

Hawaii wildfires concentrate on the leeward, dry sides of each island rather than in the wet rainforest interiors most visitors picture. Former sugarcane and pineapple plantation land, now largely fallow, and active or former ranch land carry most of the fuel, because both were cleared decades ago and re-grew almost entirely in non-native grass.

West Maui, where Lahaina sits, upcountry Maui around Kula, the Kohala and Waimea districts and the Kona side of Hawaii Island, the Waianae Coast of Oahu, and the west side of Kauai around Hanapepe and Waimea are the areas that appear most often in county fire and evacuation reports. Nearly all of this land was agricultural or ranching land within living memory.

The connecting thread across islands is abandonment, not wilderness. The Hawaii Invasive Species Council notes that the 1990s decline of the sugar industry left large tracts of land unmanaged, and that is exactly where non-native grasses have taken over most completely.

What are the largest wildfires in Hawaii history?

Hawaii's largest fires by acreage burned in remote ranch and grassland, not in towns, and the state's most consequential fire by far is not the largest by acres. The Mana Road Fire on Hawaii Island in July-August 2021 burned more than 40,000 acres of state and private land, mostly Parker Ranch grassland above Waimea on the slopes of Mauna Kea, making it the largest wildfire recorded in state history and displacing it as the record from the 2005 Waikoloa Fire's roughly 25,000 acres.

On August 8-9, 2023, four separate wildfires burned a combined 6,693 acres across Maui in a single wind event: 3,240 acres in South Maui, 2,170 acres at Lahaina, and 1,283 acres upcountry, according to Honolulu Civil Beat's analysis of county and state damage data. Lahaina's acreage was modest by Hawaii's own historical standard; its death toll was not.

Maui County's final count, released by the Maui Police Department on June 24, 2024 after the Honolulu Medical Examiner attributed one additional death to fire injuries, put the confirmed toll at 102, all identified, ranging in age from 7 to 97.

The fire destroyed roughly 2,200 structures, about 86% of them residential, and county and state officials have put wind and wildfire losses at an estimated $3.29 billion. It surpassed the 2018 Camp Fire in California, which killed 85 people; the 1918 Cloquet Fire in Minnesota, which killed 453, was the last US wildfire to be deadlier.

The Hawaii Attorney General's office retained the Fire Safety Research Institute to conduct an independent investigation, publishing its first phase, the Lahaina Fire Comprehensive Timeline Report, on April 17, 2024. Investigators traced the fire's start to a downed power line that ignited dry grass near a road before dawn on August 8.

The report found the blaze had been reported extinguished before it re-ignited hours later and spread through the town. We state these figures because Maui County and the state's own investigators have published them, not to dwell on the event; readers who need the full timeline should go to the official report rather than secondhand summaries.

Why do invasive grasses drive Hawaii's fire risk?

Non-native grasses cover roughly a quarter of the Hawaiian Islands' land area today, and the Hawaii Invasive Species Council (HISC) links their spread directly to fire: HISC reports that wildfire frequency across the islands has increased 400% over the last century as drought and unmanaged grass growth have compounded each other.

Before human contact, Hawaii had few native grass species and almost no grassland outside dry coastal dunes and high subalpine slopes. Native Hawaiians later used fire to cultivate pili grass for thatching. Everything changed after Western contact: land clearing, cattle grazing and the intentional introduction of pasture grasses established more than 200 non-native grass species, and HISC's own list names ten as high fire-hazard "ecosystem modifiers," led by guinea grass and fountain grass.

The 1990s collapse of the sugar and pineapple industries is the hinge point HISC and university researchers keep returning to. Plantations that once kept land cultivated or grazed went fallow, and grass filled the gap within a few seasons. Clay Trauernicht, a wildfire researcher at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, has said the fire problem is "mostly attributable to the vast extents of non-native grasslands left unmanaged by large landowners" in what he calls the post-plantation era.

Elizabeth Pickett, co-executive director of the nonprofit Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, argues the risk is not fixed: "any kind of grass and any kind of vegetation that's going to dry out during our dry season are going to be flammable. It's a matter of active management," she told Hawaii Public Radio, pointing to grazing, mowing and green firebreaks as tools that already work on managed ranchland.

What weather drives Hawaii fire danger?

Three factors combine to create critical fire weather in Hawaii: drought severity, low relative humidity and wind, particularly the strong, dry downslope winds that can accompany a passing Kona low or a high-pressure system funneling trade winds through mountain gaps. NWS Honolulu issues Red Flag Warnings on an island-by-island basis rather than statewide, because conditions can differ sharply between islands on the same day.

The office's published criteria require all three conditions together at designated stations: a Keetch-Byram Drought Index of 500 or higher (or fire-agency consultation confirming critical drought), relative humidity at or below 45% sustained for two or more hours, and sustained wind of 26 mph or greater sustained for two or more hours.

NWS Honolulu is explicit that the criteria are a guide, not a guarantee: "the issuance of a Red Flag Warning does not predict nor guarantee new fire ignitions," and, just as important, "the lack of a Red Flag Warning does not mean that wildfire risk is not present." Cured invasive grass can carry fire on a day that falls short of every threshold.

Downslope wind events are the pattern behind Hawaii's worst fire days. A strong high-pressure system north of the islands, combined with a passing low or a hurricane tracking well offshore, can drive dry, gusty winds down leeward slopes for many hours at a stretch — the same mechanism, on a smaller scale, that has driven destructive wind-terrain fires elsewhere in the country.

How do evacuations work in Hawaii?

County civil defense and emergency management agencies order Hawaii wildfire evacuations, not the state. Hawaii County Civil Defense, the Maui Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), Kauai Emergency Management Agency and Honolulu's Department of Emergency Management each issue plain-language "evacuation order" notices for their own island, typically specifying the streets or districts affected and a direction of travel away from the fire.

Recent incidents show the pattern in practice. During the June 2025 Kahikinui brush fire on Maui, county officials issued an evacuation order and directed residents to head toward the highway's ocean side, distributing the alert through mobile notifications and door-to-door contact by emergency personnel. During a July 2025 fire in Maili on West Oahu, evacuation orders covered hundreds of homes.

That finding has driven policy change. Hawaii Emergency Management Agency has since emphasized layered warning — wireless emergency alerts, outdoor sirens, and local media alongside door-to-door notification — rather than relying on any single channel. It is a different model from Washington's staged Level 1, 2 and 3 evacuation system; see our Washington fire map page for that comparison. Hawaii's own terminology stays deliberately simple: an evacuation order means leave now, by the route officials specify.

Sign up for your county's emergency alert system before a fire starts, since a map can show you where a fire is burning but only your county can tell you whether your address is included in an order.

How do you read a Hawaii fire map in 60 seconds?

A Hawaii fire map is most useful when you work through it in the same order every time, whether you are checking a routine brush fire or an active evacuation.

1. Open the live fire map and filter to Hawaii, or allow location access to see fires within a set distance of you in miles.
2. Look for an official incident record and perimeter first; a mapped perimeter means an agency has confirmed and measured the fire.
3. Check the fire's island, because conditions and evacuation authority differ by island even on the same day.
4. Read the timestamps — "Last NIFC update," "Last satellite heat" and "Last GOES heat" — to judge how current each number really is.
5. Scan for an active NWS Red Flag Warning over that island, since it signals conditions where a small fire can grow quickly.
6. Check your county's alert system and local news for the current evacuation status of your own address.

The same routine works whenever smoke or a new start appears on a neighboring island. Our guide to reading a live US wildfire map covers each data layer in more depth, and finding fires near you explains how the proximity filter works.

What does wildfire smoke do to Hawaii air quality?

Wildfire smoke in Hawaii is a localized, fast-moving hazard rather than the weeks-long regional haze that mainland states see, because trade winds usually clear it within a day or two. The State Department of Health's Clean Air Branch issues smoke and dust advisories during active fires, as it did within hours of the August 2023 Maui fires, urging residents with asthma, bronchitis or other respiratory conditions to stay indoors or leave the area until smoke subsides.

DOH's advisories point residents to its near-real-time air quality monitoring network and to AirNow's national fire and smoke mapping tool. Smoke concentrations, like anywhere else in the country, are reported through the EPA's Air Quality Index, which uses six color-coded categories.

Hawaii residents also live with vog, sulfur dioxide haze from active volcanism on Hawaii Island, which DOH tracks separately from wildfire smoke even though both can push the same monitors into unhealthy ranges on the same day. Our smoke and air quality tracker guide explains how those overlays are built and how to tell sources apart.

Frequently asked questions about the Hawaii fire map