Hawaiian Electric Refocuses Grid Plan on Wildfire Risk

Hawaiian Electric said it wasn’t sufficiently focused on wildfire risk before August’s deadly blaze on Maui and proposed nearly tripling the money it would now spend on the effort.  

The utility, in regulatory filings this week, said it had been more concerned with hurricanes than with wildfire risk before the Aug. 8 fire that killed 100 people and leveled the town of Lahaina. The company said it now wants to revise a plan to improve its power grid to focus more on wildfires.