The Maui News - Firefighters from Maui and Lana‘i battled flare-ups and hot spots last week in a 1,000-acre area blackened by a massive brush fire on Lana‘i that forced an evacuation of the Manele Bay Resort on Tuesday, Nov. 18. The fire occurred in a section of the Palawai Basin between Lana‘i City and the Manele Bay Resort. It broke out at about the time the National Weather Service issued a wind advisory, saying an upper-level cold trough and a surface-level front were causing subsiding air to accelerate in leeward areas such as Lana‘i. On Wednesday, Nov. 19, Maui County Spokeswoman Mahina Martin said windy conditions were hampering firefighting efforts, but there were no reports of injuries or damage to structures.

The fire was also associated with a power outage that hit Lana‘i City and Manele Bay at around 12:45 p.m. Tuesday. A Maui Electric Co. crew was able to restore power in a half hour, but it was reported that the fire was burning through an area in which transmission lines were located, and there was no way of telling whether the fire caused the outage or if the outage was related to the fire.

On Wednesday afternoon, MECO Spokeswoman Kau’i Awai-Dickson said the cause of the fire and the power outage were still under investigation.