At the start of this week, noth­ing seemed out of the or­di­nary to the res­i­dents of Maui. Scat­tered bush­fires were not cause for alarm and the is­land was out of the tra­jec­to­ry of Hur­ri­cane Do­ra, a cat­e­go­ry four storm hun­dreds of miles to the south in the Pa­cif­ic Ocean.

How­ev­er, by mid-week, strong winds from the hur­ri­cane had stoked sea­son­al fires in­to fast-mov­ing dead­ly in­fer­nos that con­sumed idyl­lic wa­ter­front com­mu­ni­ties, his­toric land­marks and homes, leav­ing be­hind apoc­a­lyp­tic scenes of death and dev­as­ta­tion.

By late yes­ter­day, the num­ber of con­firmed deaths was 55 and ex­pect­ed to climb much high­er, at least 1,000 peo­ple were un­ac­count­ed for and the pre­lim­i­nary es­ti­mates were for loss­es in ex­cess of US$10 bil­lion.

This dis­as­ter un­fold­ing on a trop­i­cal is­land lo­cat­ed an ocean away from T&T is yet an­oth­er cli­mate change warn­ing that should not be ig­nored. It comes amid oth­er cli­mate ex­tremes play­ing out around the globe, in­clud­ing the ex­treme and un­prece­dent­ed heat events of Ju­ly/Au­gust.

There are lessons from the dead­ly Maui wild­fires for T&T and the rest of the Caribbean — not just a cau­tion­ary tale but an ur­gent warn­ing for this re­gion of ill-pre­pared na­tions.

Ju­ly was the hottest month since record-keep­ing be­gan 142 years ago and at the cur­rent rate, more tem­per­a­ture records could be bro­ken this month.

It would be fool­hardy to down­play the very re­al threat loom­ing for the Caribbean, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause this is the most vul­ner­a­ble re­gion to cli­mate change in the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

This chain of small is­land de­vel­op­ing states (SIDS) is al­ready ex­pe­ri­enc­ing ris­ing sea lev­els and a much warmer Caribbean Sea could su­per­charge the storms that are like­ly to de­vel­op in the com­ing weeks and months, mak­ing them more in­tense and more like­ly to reach cat­e­go­ry 4 or 5.

In many parts of the re­gion, there is al­ready clear ev­i­dence of ac­cel­er­at­ed ero­sion of coast­lines and bleach­ing of coral reefs and at an av­er­age of 3.6 mm per year since 1993, while the sea lev­el in our cor­ner of the world has been ris­ing at a slight­ly high­er rate than the glob­al av­er­age of 3.3mm per year.

In T&T, which has been spared di­rect hits from strong hur­ri­canes for close to a cen­tu­ry, all it takes is a heavy down­pour to bring on cat­a­stroph­ic floods and land­slides. And even when the weath­er isn’t a di­rect fac­tor, there are oth­er signs of el­e­vat­ed stress­es from the cli­mate, such as the fre­quent lo­cust in­fes­ta­tions in south Trinidad, a di­rect re­sult of de­for­esta­tion.

The bot­tom line is that what­ev­er form it takes, should dis­as­ter strike, our is­lands are not pre­pared.

It isn’t pos­si­ble to pre­vent nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, but greater ef­fort needs to be put in­to avoid­ing the dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects.

Ur­gent ac­tions should be tak­en at sev­er­al lev­els, in­clud­ing chang­ing some poli­cies, im­ple­ment­ing oth­ers and ac­tive­ly work­ing to en­cour­age be­hav­iour­al shifts in the pop­u­la­tion, en­cour­ag­ing green­er lifestyles.

Al­ready on the ta­ble in T&T are car­bon-re­duc­tion strate­gies for the pow­er gen­er­a­tion, trans­porta­tion and in­dus­tri­al sec­tors with the goal of re­duc­ing emis­sions by 2030.

How­ev­er, there is a need for an all-out ef­fort to re­duce elec­tric­i­ty us­age, use of plas­tics and aerosols and to in­crease re­cy­cling.

With the Maui wild­fires as a grim re­minder of how quick­ly dis­as­ter can strike and in­flict a se­vere toll, T&T and the rest of the Caribbean need to get se­ri­ous about avert­ing and min­imis­ing the risks.