Community-Driven Recovery: The Lahaina Wildfires a Year Later
Lahaina can benefit tremendously from a community-driven approach to identifying recovery needs.
By Aaron Clark-Ginsberg, Lance Tan, Elizabeth Bowen
Since wildfires devastated Lahaina, Maui, just over a year ago, the town has been consumed by the monumental tasks of rebuilding and recovery. To keep the momentum going in the years ahead, Lahaina should remain focused on existing efforts to shift towards a community-driven approach to disaster recovery.
Last year’s fires destroyed much of Lahaina’s buildings and physical infrastructure. Most of the debris from this destruction has been cleared away, building permits are being issued, and construction is starting. Tourism — which fell precipitously across the island after the fires — is still down but shows some signs of returning. And Lahaina locals have been supporting each other throughout this process, including just recently coming together in a paddle-out ceremony to memorialize the fires.
Recovery from any large-scale disaster is a long-term process that frequently takes many years. Success is predicated on delicate and thoughtful efforts aimed at supporting survivors in their own recoveries. Community-driven approaches, part of a broader family of bottom-up approaches to disaster management, offer a proven framework for engaging with survivors (PDF) and ensuring success.
Lahaina can benefit tremendously from a community-driven approach to identifying recovery needs.
Lahaina can benefit tremendously from a community-driven approach to identifying recovery needs. This involves working closely with survivors themselves to understand their housing, health, economic, social, and other needs. Some community needs assessments have already occurred (PDF). They could be expanded to include deeper engagement with communities and tracking to determine how needs evolve over time. This may result in identifying needs that are not obvious.
Housing could be an example of a seemingly obvious need. Housing damage is both directly observable and widespread, and it was identified in previous needs assessments. However, housing-needs specifics are not obvious. Who in Lahaina requires housing support and who can recover on their own? Where should new construction occur? And how should housing support be provided? A community-driven needs assessment can help answer these questions and identify other needs — from psychosocial and cultural support to mental health and cultural resources. Lahaina locals know what their needs are.
Lahaina also could support and build on existing community-driven recovery efforts. Under a community-driven approach, affected populations are not passive victims of disaster to be helped, but rather survivors actively engaged in shaping and building their future. Individuals and households are working on their own recovery, and collectively Lahaina has a community feel and spirit of self-help. Such commitment can be seen in community efforts in recovery planning, gatherings of hope and prayer, a concert series, delivery of essential childcare and health services, establishment of community land trusts, and the formation of mutual aid organizations. State and federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, foundations, and other external organizations supporting recovery in Lahaina can build on this by providing financial resources when needed, sharing information and coordinating community recovery activities, and reducing barriers that may stymie these efforts.
Emphasizing the recovery efforts of communities themselves cannot be an excuse to place all responsibility on survivors. This is a form of abandonment that slows rather than accelerates recovery. For example, rebuilding the tourism industry is an effort that will require additional external support. One of the main industries in Maui, tourism remains down across the island from before the wildfire — not because the island now lacks tourism infrastructure or its natural beauty has been destroyed, but because of a perception that the island is devastated. Efforts are clearly needed to enhance tourism and change messaging. This is not something Lahaina locals can do on their own but rather takes a coordinated effort and financial commitments to advertising from state and federal agencies as well as other external recovery supporters.
Finally, a community-driven approach can help establish a vision of Lahaina’s future that may not look exactly like its pre-disaster past. Disasters fundamentally change a place and its people, but they also can offer opportunities to make a place better. In Lahaina, planners could consider the functions the town center provides, issues of affordability, and resilience to hazards. Engaging with communities to capture their vision should be a fundamental step in recovery planning.
Shifting towards a community-driven approach to recovery requires sustained engagement with Lahaina residents, including those who have been displaced or who might be otherwise difficult to reach. It also requires careful navigation of what may be real differences within communities on what recovery should look like. And it requires a spirit of collaboration, openness, and justice.
Meeting these requirements is challenging any time, but can be even more so in post-disaster situations when decisions must be made rapidly and when survivors may be focused on their own recovery needs. It is, however, necessary for successful recovery and building back better.
This originally appeared on rand.org on August 16, 2024.
