Healing the wounds this disaster has opened will be a long time coming.
By VICTORIA LEE, DANIEL PONS & SPARSH SHARMA
Editor’s note (Sept. 15): Officials announced Friday that the previous death toll of 115 was overstated. The figure has been updated to 97 following further review of victims’ DNA samples. This article has also been edited to reflect the change. (Associated Press)
I. The Blaze
When Alara Berkmen returned to her hometown of Kihei, Hawaiʻi two weeks before the start of school, she assumed it would be a good time to reconnect with friends and rewind after a busy summer of research. Instead, she found herself spending her 19th birthday aiding disaster relief efforts in the aftermath of the deadliest wildfires the United States had seen in more than 100 years.
“The fires were moving a mile a minute,” Berkmen, a sophomore majoring in biomedical engineering, told us. At one point, there were four fires raging simultaneously on the 735-square-mile island of Maui — one in Lāhainā, one in Upcountry — Kula, one in Central Maui — Olinda, and one in Pulehu-Kihei. All fires are still active, with only one fully contained. Berkmen said she saw “patients who ha[d] burns all the way down their legs from running at the last minute, just off the highway out of their cars.”
Those who survived consider themselves lucky, as the fast-moving fires, highly flammable brush, state of drought, fallen power lines and lack of communication made a deadly combination.
“Many of the victims were children who were sent home due to what was previously a contained fire,” Berkmen told us. “Many reports say that there were children trapped in their homes, because they weren’t told by anyone that there was a fire. By the time they realized, it was too late.”
On Aug. 8, the day the Lāhainā fire blew out of control, many of Lāhainā’s 3,000 public school students were sent home because of already-strong winds. Other schools hadn’t opened yet.
At the time of publication, thousands are displaced, with the official death toll standing at 97 — a number that will most certainly climb as the FBI reported that up to 1,100 people are still unaccounted for, and may never be found.
Berkmen’s father, a radiologist at the Maui Memorial Medical Center, had told her “they were just finding bones, like teeth, on the road.” When we last spoke with her Aug. 16, word on the street was that 150 body bags were already filled, with 400 more ordered.
“This is in Lāhainā alone,” Berkmen told us.
One man, Berkmen recalled, had been volunteering at the War Memorial Complex — an outdoor stadium — for 48 hours straight.
“They asked him several times, ‘Please go home and take a rest; go somewhere, get some sleep,’” Berkmen told us. “And he said, ‘I don’t have a home to go to’ … He stays there every day and works more than anyone else — and that’s all he does.”
(Tomoki Chien / Daily Trojan)
Lāhainā did experience these fires, but Lāhainā still lives.
Jadynne Zane
Junior studying biomedical engineering and social media director of the USC Hawai‘i Club
II. The Great Māhele
An estimated 20,000 acres of Hawaiʻi’s land mass burns every year — greater than the proportion of any other state in the United States.
But until the turn of the century, the top danger was tsunamis: The deadliest natural disaster in Hawaiian history was a tsunami in 1946 that killed 165 people. The evolution of fire as a similarly dominant threat is a story with human fingerprints all over it.
When Polynesians initially settled in Maui circa 700 CE, their resulting society operated on a feudal system outlined by rules prohibiting the abuse of natural resources and prioritizing the preservation of the landscape.
In 1786, British colonists brought the beginning of Western ideas of trade and a market economy to the island. King Kamehameha III attempted to divide lands among Native Hawaiians in what became known as the Great Māhele (to divide or portion) in 1848. However, with a lack of interest, or perhaps understanding, around this initiative, the territories were instead sold to external interests — such as the Big Five.
The Big Five were a league of sugarcane processing companies — C. Brewer & Co., Theo H Davies & Co., H. Hackfeld & Co. (later known as American Factors), Alexander & Baldwin, and Castle & Cook — whose century-long domination of the Hawaiian landscape and economy peaked in 1933 with plantations spanning more than a quarter of a million acres.
To accommodate rapid growth, a ditch was built to irrigate the arid central basin of Maui. The concurrent development of the cattle industry also required grasses adapted to arid climates for feed: guinea grass, molasses grass and buffelgrass. These grasses’ rapid growth cycles were conducive to fire and — upon finding almost no competition from native Hawaiian flora — settled quite comfortably on drier portions of the island, which grew as sugar growers began redirecting streams to expand harvest mass. Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar, the last plantation to leave the islands in 2016, routinely diverted water from more than 19 streams across Maui to irrigate 36,000 acres of land.
In the wake of World War II, the sugar industry fell out of competition in international markets, and the introduction of the passenger jet two decades later revealed that greater profit might lie in building tourist accommodations. Faced with a declining population from 1940 to 1960, the government of Maui stood at a crossroads: It could diversify its agriculture, or imitate Oahu’s success in the tourism industry.
Many of Maui’s plantations were left abandoned and barren, and the highly flammable invasive grasses took root. As tourism swept the island, so did they.
Since the establishment of these invasive prairies in 1999, Maui has experienced an average of four fires a year. Tourism now comprises 80% of Maui’s economy. While new hotels dot the coastline and the greens of world-famous golf courses like Kapalua (costing $359 per round) are, well, green, efforts have been sparse in reestablishing the far less flammable native flora that once graced central and Western Maui.
Approximately 60% of residents in Maui County are affected by drought, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System. A drought so severe that locals could receive up to $500 in fines for using water for “non-essential activities,” like washing their cars or using a sprinkler system. It’s hard to blame people for wanting to visit, Berkmen said, but “it’s this constant redirection of resources towards touristic sites that has strained the community, the local community in particular.”
(Tomoki Chien / Daily Trojan)
It’s this constant redirection of resources towards touristic sites that has strained … the local community in particular.
Alara Berkmen
Sophomore majoring in biomedical engineering; grew up in Kihei, Hawai‘i
III. Control Center
The only sounds that filled the air during those three days, when the fires were at their worst, were the crackling of everything burning, the howling of the wind — Hurricane Dora, brewing several hundred miles south of Hawaiʻi, brought winds up to 81 miles an hour — and the cacophony of people trying to escape.
Notably absent were the 400 emergency alarms of Hawaiʻi’s state-of-the-art vaunted integrated outdoor siren warning system. Herman Andaya, administrator of Maui’s Emergency Management Agency, later defended the decision. When asked at a press conference if he regretted not sounding the sirens, Andaya said “I do not,” citing concerns that blaring an alarm usually reserved for tsunamis would have led people to travel inland. He has since resigned.
While human error is fairly unavoidable, especially under pressure during a natural disaster, Maui’s history of drought, along with highly flammable flora and challenging logistics, should have been warning enough.
“The logistics of the islands, let alone logistics of Maui, don’t lend themselves to the same kinds of provisions when you think about a natural disaster, or when people reference the Paradise fires,” Gordon Stables, director of the School of Journalism, told us.
The Maui Fire Department has approximately 200 firefighters and 10 fire stations for 735 square miles. Should its forces run thin, the Honolulu Fire Department has 332 firefighters and 44 stations — but there are roughly 100 nautical miles between Maui and O‘ahu.
In contrast, the Los Angeles Fire Department has 1,051 uniformed firefighters to cover 466 square miles. Nearby Orange County Fire Authority has 78 fire stations and the Thousand Oaks Fire Department has 553 firefighters.
IV. Dual Identity
“There are two different Hawaiʻis,” Jadynne Zane, a junior majoring in biomedical engineering and social media director of the USC Hawaiʻi Club, told us. On the one hand, “there seems to be a Hawaiʻi that is extremely affected by this fire, this community that’s really tight-knit, working to rebuild everything.”
On the other hand, there were the tourists. There was “a lot of support from the mainland,” Zane acknowledged, but it was difficult to ignore the small, but loud, “handful of individuals who are complaining that their trip or vacation is ruined.”
In a widely circulated news clip, one woman, a resident of Redding, California, appeared to complain that her vacation flight to Maui was canceled, claiming that the Maui fires looked “pretty bad but not nearly compared to what [they]’re used to.”
The reputation of Maui as a tourist destination complicates the conversation even further, as locals and media report of tourists snorkeling in the same waters that, a day or two prior, locals had jumped into to avoid the fires.
“They had a whole trip planned, and now it might be totally ruined. But, at the same time, people … are trying to salvage their whole lives,” said Matthew Kimura, a senior majoring in business administration and president of the USC Hawaiʻi Club. “It’s not just a trip.”
As a Kahului native, Zane enjoyed trips to Front Street, where she would explore museums with friends. While known to outsiders as “a very touristy spot,” Lāhainā, formerly a thriving wetlands, and the famous Front Street have both long been revered. It’s home to many rich cultural sites, such as the museums Na’ Aikane o Maui, Whalers Village, and Baldwin Home.
Lāhainā was also the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, home of Kihawahine Mokuhinia Kalama‘ula Kalā‘aiheana (a powerful moʻo goddess who lived in Mokuhinia Pond), and residence to King Kamehameha I (best known for uniting the islands). Beyond that, it’s the site of Lāhaināluna, the first secondary school West of the Rockies.
“The Banyan trees there, I’ve grown up with them,” Zane told us. “My mom used to go there all the time to sit and relax.” From hosting hula performances to community gatherings, “it was really just this beautiful place that not only mixed the local people, but also mixed tourism.”
One banyan tree is particularly notable — a 150-year-old tree that stands in the center of Lāhainā at more than 60 feet high with 46 major trunks. It also survived the fires — but in a state akin to a coma at the moment, the tree is traumatized considerably. With proper aeration, care and nutrition, arborists and locals are hoping for the best.
Perhaps the tree is a mirror to the community that cares for it.
“Although historic monuments or buildings that hold historical value were burnt down, the memory is still there. Lāhainā did experience these fires, but Lāhainā still lives,” Zane told us.
(Tomoki Chien / Daily Trojan)
“[Tourists] had a whole trip planned, and now it might be totally ruined. But, at the same time, people … are trying to salvage their whole lives.”
Matthew Kimura
Senior majoring in business administration and president of the USC Hawai‘i Club
V. In the Eye of the Beholder
There’s “a different sense of gentrification in terms of what is understood as wealth,” Stables said. More than 2,200 buildings burned in Lāhainā, many of which were residential buildings and some of the most expensive real estate on the island. Before the fires, Maui already faced a housing crisis among locals and native Hawaiians.
With lower-scale disasters in Southern California, tremendous surges in property values are not uncommon. A similar effect is expected for Maui.
“It creates those really difficult situations for people where, it might be a plot of land that’s been in a family for generations, and they’re suddenly confronted with a loss of income,” Stables said.
While labeled as “generational wealth” by realtors and external analysts, these historic properties are priceless to the residents themselves.
“There’s people who have lived in the same home for seven, eight, 10 generations on Front Street,” said Papaikanīʻau Kaiʻanui, who graduated in 2012 and is a professor of Hawaiian language and Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaiʻi, Maui College.
Unfortunately, reports are already circulating of “vulturistic” realtors phoning recent unhoused residents inquiring about purchases. Echoing concerns of both native and local Maui communities, Berkmen expressed fear of a future “where land is bought up by people who don’t understand its sacred significance.” Lāhainā should go to the people who need it, and the Native Hawaiians that deserve it, she told us.
Whether this actually happens is the breadwinning question.
Josh Green, the governor of Hawaiʻi, recently announced plans to buy Lāhainā to build residential properties or a memorial to remember the fires and lives lost. But he’s just one man.
“Private interests, like capitalist insurance, come in and use these terms like ‘build back better,’” said Shannon Gibson, associate professor of environmental studies and director of the Gibson Climate Justice Lab at USC. “But the question of that is, ‘Build back better for who?’”
That, Gibson said, would be short-sighted policymakers and politicians who choose “to focus on profit — short term gains like the very next election cycle as opposed to making decisions for the long term.” Investing money in mitigation, adapting warning systems and in preventative measures are just a few long-term possibilities. But lack thereof is “something, again, that we’ve seen over and over and over.”
VI. Planting
This isn’t the first disaster of scale to happen on Maui — but the blueprint was made for a landscape and infrastructure that is no longer in place today.
“Because our people lived an island life and focused on land, they were able to recover quickly — they had the blueprint on what it took to rejuvenate, replant and replenish what was lost during those fires or hurricanes,” Kaiʻanui told us.
The island is nearly unrecognizable today, with the forcible removal of Native leadership, developed dependence on the mainland in terms of imports and exports, and expansion of aggressive non-native grasses with the abandonment of sugarcane and pineapple plantations for tourism.
With advertisements portraying Hawaiʻi as a tourist’s paradise, Berkmen told us the fires have shown what is — and isn’t — Hawaiʻi.
“The islands aren’t some untouchable thing that is constantly in a state of paradise as seen on brochures… it’s where our waters are going, where our resources are going to maintain that perfect image,” she said.
Tourism is undeniably a double-edged sword — and finding balance in the tango between conservation and tourism is tricky.
“On the one hand, it leads to the erosion of Native languages, cultures, forced assimilation, catering to outsiders, all of these things,” Gibson said, “but it also provides a significant amount of jobs and a huge economic factor on the island.” Despite this contribution, it isn’t a path dependency. “A lot of people tend to think of it as going back — but instead of thinking about going back, how do you integrate those more traditional ways, and diversify the economy so that there isn’t this level of dependence?”
The only sounds that filled the air during those three days, when the fires were at their worst, were the crackling of everything burning, the howling of the wind — Hurricane Dora, brewing several hundred miles south of Hawaiʻi, brought winds up to 81 miles an hour — and the cacophony of people trying to escape. (Amanda Chou)
VII. The Elephants in the Room
With the time-relevant nature of the media, as the number of days grow since the onset of an incident, attention increasingly wanes — and less people with eyes on it means less accountability and oversight. Hawaiians have always been outspoken about the marginalization they experience, but the fires seem to have been a catalyst that has catapulted them into the public, and academic eye. The golden question, though, is if there’s enough support from both parties to keep it there.
In Gibson’s experience at previous United Nations climate negotiations, the concept of sustainable development is being increasingly criticized — as many people are realizing that climate change alternatives don’t necessarily equate to an ‘easy fix.’
“Even eco-tourism, which is supposed to be more environmentally friendly, leads to the bifurcation of resources, where the clean water, services and green spaces go to visitors, not the people who live there,” she said.
At the higher levels, developing countries such as Bolivia, the Philippines and other alliances of small island-states are starting to stand up and push against advocates of ecotourism.
“One of the best ways forward is to get marginalized voices, the impacted, and frontline communities into positions of power and policymaking,” Gibson said. “When those voices aren’t given a seat at the table, other forces and interests prevail — be it the economic, political, et cetera.”
While access to environmental NGOs and youth activists is greater in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues than in other areas of international governance, Gibson said it’s still heavily underrepresented, especially in terms of diversity and accurate reflection.
“When you look at representation in the climate talks, it’s still predominantly male,” she said. “It’s still predominantly those who are educated in the U.S. and Europe, predominantly English speaking and incredibly privileged individuals.”
So how do we ensure representatives are truly representative?
Gibson believes the disaster will have waterfall effects in terms of policy and legislation, where youth activists may use the recent fires as justification for lawsuits filed against the Hawaiian government. In terms of the general climate, there are “a couple of youth climate lawsuits that have been filed across the U.S., and there’s one in Hawaiʻi that’ll go to trial.”
Whether in walkouts, marches, lawsuits, mobilizations or voting, Gibson has faith in grassroots and generational efforts to put pressure at all points and “re-assert what would be more of the wants and needs of the people that live there year round, as opposed to those that come in and out for a one or two week vacation.”
But besides the traditional vacation tourism, a longer-form of tourism — residential tourism — is problematic, if not worse.
Oprah Winfrey owns three plots of land totaling more than 1,000 acres, in addition to a $6.6 million vacation home on Maui. This situation isn’t unique to Oprah; other billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg (700 acres, worth more than $100 million), Jeff Bezos (South Maui estate, $78 million) and Larry Ellison (98% of island Lānaʻi, $300 million) also have property portfolios that include Hawaiʻi.
Though the media covered Oprah traveling to Maui for disaster relief work, critics also contend that billionaires like Oprah contribute to a broader tourism problem; her real estate portfolio, a blatant occupation of Native lands, stands in stark contrast to the housing crisis for Natives and locals — which has been exacerbated by the fires.
“At some point I will make a major donation after all of the smoke and ashes have settled here, and we figure out what the rebuilding process is going to look like,” Oprah wrote on her Instagram page while on Maui.
The statement has since garnered public criticism, as Oprah’s considerable occupation of Maui territory and vagueness around to whom and when she would donate has made many skeptical of her motivations.
“You need to make sure that there is accountability and transparency during the rebuilding phase, which is where there tends to be much less media coverage,” Gibson said.
This accountability involves remaining cognizant of the flow of money — who it’s coming from, where it’s coming from, for what purposes (both forward and underlying) it is donated, and who it might impact and implicate in the context of the broader climate justice movement.
At the government level, Gibson said, “it’s particularly interesting that one of the biggest issues being debated at the upcoming negotiations later this year is funding for loss and damages, which is something that the United States has been one of the number one blockers of.”
The U.S. has a history of opposing assuming historical responsibility for climate loss and damages, she said, and the idea of environmental reparations, particularly in other countries. It seems that strong partisan divides along this issue have divided international conversations into a “developed versus developing world” challenge.
This is largely attributed to economic interests.
“They don’t want certain countries coming in saying ‘You owe us money for this,’ or even there being a normative expectation that they should pay even if it’s not required — having a voluntary fund,” Gibson said. “It’s quite hypocritical that the U.S. has taken that position when clearly the U.S. is suffering its own climate loss and damages.”
VIII. Ongoing
Joyce Yamada, who graduated in 1981 and is a professional development coordinator at the University of Hawai’i, Maui College, told us she was unaware of the fires’ close proximity until one of her neighbors called her.
“I was at my daughter’s place in Wailuku, and she said ‘We’re packing up our bags and we’re going to leave,” she said.
When we last spoke with her three weeks ago, Yamada had returned to her home — but with the fires active and close by, she remained vigilant at night and of its whereabouts.
Since we started following this story, a great deal has happened up to today’s publication. Many parts of Maui have reopened for tourism, simultaneously grappling with recent events and maintaining a functioning economy.
As Berkmen told us, “this is not a race, it’s a marathon.”
The fires are still burning — and this is far from over. ❋
Victoria Lee is an opinion columnist and sports columnist at the Daily Trojan. She is a sophomore majoring in philosophy, politics & economics.
Daniel Pons is a staff writer at the Daily Trojan. He is a sophomore majoring in architecture.
Sparsh Sharma was the finance beat writer at the Daily Trojan. He is a senior majoring in economics.