Maui, an idyllic bit of beauty in the middle of the Pacific, is burning.
My roommates and I work on boats, spending our days on the ocean — eating, sleeping, and breathing boat life. It’s our livelihood. And on an island heavily dependent on tourism, it’s a lot of our livelihoods. There are two main harbors we use on the island: Lahaina on the west and Mä'alaea in the south.
This winter, we experienced a lot of rain. The vegetation turned lush, green, and abundant. And then it dried up in the drought. And now we have acres and acres of tinder just waiting.
Can you see where this is going? Hurricane Dora sent winds our way, and power lines fell. That’s all it took.
Kula, Wailuku, North Kihei — Lahaina — are on fire. Lahaina is gone. The oldest banyan tree known in the States, which spanned an entire city block, is now charred to a skeleton. The entire harbor went up in flames. Front St, packed with shops, art galleries, and the corner gelato place where we used to pau hana, is now gone.
My roommates were the only ones who managed to get their boat out of Lahaina and down to Mä’alaea. They left their cars in Lahaina. Her new little blue KIA is now a gone little charcoal not KIA. They stumbled home at 6 am this morning, having spent the night on their company boat, hearing the Coast Guard coming and going all night. Boat crew is crashing at our place now because they have no home to return to. They have the one bag that they grabbed from their car before everything went down. Sunnies. About $2000 in cash. And a box of Hoyhoys. Jokes are still okay for now. Everyone is shell-shocked.
It’s a strange feeling, being the news. Media outlets are furiously publishing live updates. But being in the center of it, it unfurls slowly.
Kihei means “cloak” in Hawaiian, and that was never more true than last night. Winds raged everywhere else, at over 70 mph in some places, but in South Kihei, it was eerily calm. I could have gone surfing. The only indication that things were wrong were the two apocalyptic, glowing blazes in the distance and the smell of campfire. Normally, I like the smell of wood smoke, but the smell of paradise burning is different. It’s concentrated campfire — a smell of far too many homes burning, causing your nose to instinctively flinch away. Your human self knows this isn’t the smell of a controlled flame cooking your dinner. This is the smell of combustion, hungry for oxygen, fueled by brush, consuming people’s everythings.
It’s constantly refreshing Maui 24/7 at 10 pm. It’s being jolted awake by evacuation orders at 1 am. It’s scrolling for more news until it’s 2 am. Processing street names and hoping that the new stable you just started at was able to evacuate all the people and animals because it is right there at the fire. It’s unanswered texts to everyone you know on the west side because cell service and power is down. It’s watching the footage trickle in–videos of smoke so thick it’s an angry opaque gray and fires so widespread that the entire ocean shimmers black molten red. People are sleeping in their cars on the street because hotels are gone. It’s waiting for news. Stressful calls back and forth:
Are you okay?
Yeah. Are you okay?
I think so.
Have you found her?
No, not yet.
It’s waiting for emergency first responders to come from other islands and the mainland because ours have been fighting and dealing with 7 fires for 24 hours. It’s just waiting.
You come to us for a slice of paradise: blue skies, sunshine, rainbows, and clear clear waters filled with fish and dolphins and whales. But maybe don’t visit the west side for a while. We have no docks, no slips. We have no harbor to go out of for snorkeling. The offices, the gas station, the businesses, the boats, the homes, the pets, the people. Gone. Facebook is flooded with posts of people trying to track loved ones down. Our roads are closed. There is essentially one main road connecting the west side of the island to the south side of the island and the only people moving on that right now are emergency personnel.
People are sending prayers. People are sending help. People are thanking their lucky stars for the things that didn’t happen, the tradeoffs. This is the thinnest slice of what’s happening.
We are scrambling to help. We are scrambling to piece together what the aftermath will look like.
We are still processing.
*Update: There are many fundraisers floating around. On Instagram @mauihumanesociety @hawaiicommunityfoundation for more info. Please research before donating. Highly recommend direct venmo donations to sources you trust*
