What Happens to Lahaina Now? Part 4: Compassion Fatigue

If you’re anything like most people, you’ve already pretty much forgotten about the fire that destroyed Lahaina, though it was just a little over 2 weeks ago.

What with hurricane Hilary, the wildfires in British Columbia and other parts of Canada, new wildfires in Greece, ongoing heatwaves in the central US and parts of Europe, there has been plenty of climate news to pull your attention away.

But the people of Lahaina haven’t forgotten about the fire, I promise you that. They never will.

Having been through a similar experience in 2018 with the Camp Fire, I have some idea of what lies ahead for them.

And one of the things that — sadly — lies ahead is “compassion fatigue”.

Technically, compassion fatigue is form of trauma experienced by people arising “from repeated exposure to traumatized individuals”. But Camp Fire survivors came to use the term to refer to people who were just exhausted from dealing with fire victims.

And it’s totally understandable. As a fire victim, I truly felt for the people who had to deal with us. Let me explain.

Over 40,000 people fled the Camp Fire, and most ended up in the nearby town of Chico. Chico’s population exploded literally overnight — experiencing 20 years of growth in a single day.

People filled every hotel and even took up residence in the Walmart parking lot for a lack of anywhere else to go.

But having 40,000 traumatized and newly homeless people show up suddenly in your town places a huge burden on people — and their ability to care.

In the beginning people were wonderful, and we felt blessed by the compassion that people showed to us. Sierra Nevada Brewery fed fire victims for free, something we took advantage of. They never even asked if we were from Paradise — they could tell just by looking at our traumatized faces that we were fire victims.

But that sort of compassion began to wear off relatively quickly.

There were just too many people with too many needs. Too many people with trauma. Too many people with absolutely nothing. Too many people that needed literally everything.

Not too long after the fire, they kicked everyone out of the Walmart parking lot, even though they had nowhere else to go. The free food and clothing dried up. The GoFundMes and fire victim fundraisers faded away to nothing.

Local residents started to refer to us as “fire people”, and not in a good or welcoming way.

We understood.

We were a burden. We were needy. We were damaged. And we had invaded their town.

A couple of months after the fire, we were in Walmart or Target or some such store, buying stuff to replace things we lost in the fire (FYI, this process takes years, if you happened to think otherwise), and we must have said something about still replacing things to the person at the register. And she replied, “Aren’t you over that yet?”

My wife and I both felt like we had been slapped in the face. We were both too shocked to say anything, but — even though it may have been said innocently — it stung like the most dismissive insult.

She had not been directly affected by the fire, was probably understandably tired of dealing with “fire people”, and had long since moved on.

Victims of mass climate disasters don’t have that luxury.

You can’t just move on when you lose your home and your entire town is wiped off the face of the earth. You live with that loss forever, no matter how well you “recover”.

Lahaina fire survivors will very soon have to deal with the same thing.

Perhaps you have already moved on. Given the number of climate disasters happening on a daily basis, you probably have. It’s understandable.

But they don’t get to. They don’t have that choice.

Maybe someday, neither will you.