Reflections on the Maui Wildfires
I thought I would come here and find answers. Instead, I’m leaving filled with questions.
On August 16, 2023, I flew to Hawaii in response to the wildfires that ravaged the island community of Maui. To date, 115 people have officially been declared dead and 288 are still missing and unaccounted for following what’s been described as “the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century.”
I hadn’t felt this strong urge to deploy in a long time. As an Emergency Manager, it is hard to spend every day planning for the worst and then feeling utterly helpless when the worst becomes reality.
A few days prior, team members of Project:Camp (a nonprofit I chair) had already landed on the ground to start filling a gap omnipresent in our disaster response landscape: trauma-informed childcare for kids impacted by disaster.
We set up a day camp at the local Maui Family YMCA in Kahului, about 20 miles away from the defaced town of Lahaina. For two weeks, we welcomed kids aged 6-16 to come process current events through play. While the campers played Four Square, learned the names and growing techniques of indigenous plants and fruits, and did arts and crafts, their parents or guardians could tackle items on their very long recovery checklist: filing a claim with FEMA, visiting the Local Assistance Center, determining what area they’ll call home next…
The stories we heard from our campers, their loved ones, and our local volunteers were harrowing. Maui has a relatively small population with 165K residents. Everyone we crossed paths with was either personally impacted by the recent wildfires or knew someone who was. The bond and sense of community was palpable.
The road to recovery and adaptation for West Maui will be a long and windy one. Hawaii’s colonial past, its insularity in the middle of the Pacific, and its high cost of living mixed in with scarce land will affect how the community will rebuild and reinvent itself.
After-action reports will be written assessing the local agencies’ response to the wildfires, key figures and organizations will be investigated, and trials may be had. They will help us get answers about the events that unfolded on August 8th and the hours and days that followed. These answers will help survivors make sense of what they suffered through (as much as one can make it make sense) and they will teach the rest of us what could and should be done differently to mitigate such tragic events.
Until we get those answers, I wanted to share, in no particular order, some of the many unedited questions that crossed my mind while on Maui. Some are new, some are old. Some are technical, some are philosophical. Some I fear we’ll never crack, some I’m confident we will because we have to:
How do you grieve the unimaginable?
How can we combat the rampant misinformation that takes place immediately post-disaster?
Will emergency management agencies ever be able to keep up with TikTok or whichever other popular social media platform of the moment?
How will this tiny island in the middle of a gigantic ocean recover?
What is going to happen with all the debris? Will it be shipped off? Where to? Who is going to pay for it?
How long and how expensive will it be to ship new building materials?
What businesses will go under and what businesses will rise?
How do we better educate decision-makers about emergency management?
How do we make them care before it’s too late?
How do we make them care in the periods in-between front page disaster coverage?
How do we make citizens care about disasters and the climate during election cycles?
Where are survivors going to live? How are they going to live?
Why did the maritime recovery efforts of remains take so long to begin?
How will this disaster deteriorate Hawaii’s already low-ranked economy?
How will this disaster shape the politics of Hawaii?
When will the U.S. government carry out a true emergency management reform?
Had I sat in the Emergency Operations Center when the events unfolded, how scared, helpless, helpful, driven, or [insert any other type of feeling] would I have felt? How do local emergency managers feel today?
How did the Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA) play out?
How much do you open yourself up as a responder to take in the local sights and stories so that you lead with empathy but also so that you don’t break under the sorrow? How do you strike the right balance?
How do we not break under the giant pressure that is tomorrow’s threat and hazard landscape?
What lessons of resilience and community will the people of Maui share with the world?
While answers to these questions are not clear to me yet, one thing I do know is the overwhelming feeling of hope and resilience that I experienced spending quality time with our campers and volunteers. There is something quite unique about being a kid, so I thought I’d leave you with this (ChatGPT-inspired) poem about children and resilience:
In the face of storms, they stand so small,
Children resilient, they rise, they crawl.
Through disasters that shake the world around,
Their strength shines bright, a beacon found.
In shattered cities, they find hope anew,
Amidst the ruins, dreams they pursue.
Their laughter echoes, a testament strong,
To the power of youth, to right the wrong.
They paint rainbows on desolate walls,
In the midst of adversity, they stand tall.
Their spirits unbreakable, fierce, and free,
A symbol of courage for all to see.
For within each child, a flame burns bright,
A spark of resilience, a guiding light.
In disaster's wake, they pave the way,
For a brighter future, a brand-new day.
So let us learn from their unwavering grace,
Their boundless strength in the toughest of space.
Children, the heroes of a world undone,
Teach us to rise, united as one.