NY Post ?" The grasses ?" including guinea grass, molasses grass and buffelgrass ?" were brought to the islands from Africa as livestock forage and were considered effective because they proved drought-resistant, experts say. But their advantages have backfired. "These grasses are highly aggressive, grow very fast and are highly flammable," said Melissa Chimera, whose grandmother lived on the Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co.'s plantation in Maui after emigrating from the Philippines. Maui wildfires in 2018 destroyed 21 homes. In 2018, Clay Trauernicht, a specialist in wildland fire science and management at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, sounded the alarm in a letter in 2018, to the Maui News.