Maui wild fires

gcgang

gcgang

Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
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Maui Fired, and not the good Fired

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2023/...oldest-home-maui-historic-structures-lahaina/

Just made my bi-annual trip to Lahaina, had dinner at Lahaina Grill Monday.

It’s gone. Lahaina, that is. Pioneer Inn totally incinerated. Front Street almost totally leveled. Hard to believe how fast it happened. Tragically sad.

Upcountry fires close to our place, but still home for now as fires are quite small and winds are down from the 80 mph gusts of Tuesday to 15-30mph.

Can’t imagine how long it will take to rebuild. Hope they can streamline the typical permitting process.
 
Posting in the travel section because I think most here think of Maui primarily as a travel destination.

Today the historic/tourist town of Lahaina was almost completely destroyed by a wildfire including the iconic 150 year old banyan tree. This is a shocking and sad development.

West Maui is going to have a rough few weeks, months, years. In addition to the historical loss, hundreds of families lost their homes and livelihoods.

There is a monumental effort underway to evacuate tourists and others because there is not enough shelter on Maui for all the displaced people. To their credit, most major airlines that serve Maui from the mainland are flying empty planes to Maui to evacuate visitors back to the mainland. Most tourists interviewed are happy to leave because they recognize they are a burden on local resources.

A relative at a local Maui hospital said they spent the day preparing for a mass casualty event though fortunately the human casualties seem to be limited to 6 deaths and 14 injured with only a few critical.

I live on the Big Island. We've got fires going on here too but the impacts have been nothing compared to Maui.

If you have travel plans to Maui in the next few months you will probably want to inform yourself. Nobody knows what will happen at this point but the governor is already saying there is an emergency housing crisis in the medium term. I suspect that might lead to commandeering airbnbs and hotel rooms. Most airbnbs are already illegal in Maui so the owners will hardly be able to complain and existing contracts are mostly invalid anyway. There are still cruise ships on the port schedule but they seem doubtful this fall.

But all-in-all, a very sad day for Maui!
 
Such a sad event for them all. Having suffered the total destruction of our home and land, here in California, in a wildland fire years back, I know just what the victims of this event are feeling.
We enjoy traveling to Maui and have reservations at The Whaler in Kaanapali, just a stone's throw up the coast from Lahaina from October 24th through November 3rd. It's a private condo we procured through VRBO. The owner lives near me here in California. He's a major developer and told me today he's headed there as soon as he can to do what he can to get homes built.
The question is: will Maui be in any shape for visitors by the end of October? I know there's a lot of destruction, but I am thinking of ALL the businesses that won't have clients or customers with all the travel now shut down for the immediate future. No one is going to come out of this unscathed who is in the tourism business in any fashion. They were just barely bouncing back after the COVID restrictions, now this. It breaks my heart and I do hope they bounce back from this sooner rather than later.
https://www.vrbo.com/1838001?adults...medium=email&utm_source=SYS&utm_term=20230123
 
skipro33 said:
Such a sad event for them all. Having suffered the total destruction of our home and land, here in California, in a wildland fire years back, I know just what the victims of this event are feeling.
We enjoy traveling to Maui and have reservations at The Whaler in Kaanapali, just a stone's throw up the coast from Lahaina from October 24th through November 3rd. It's a private condo we procured through VRBO. The owner lives near me here in California. He's a major developer and told me today he's headed there as soon as he can to do what he can to get homes built.
The question is: will Maui be in any shape for visitors by the end of October? I know there's a lot of destruction, but I am thinking of ALL the businesses that won't have clients or customers with all the travel now shut down for the immediate future. No one is going to come out of this unscathed who is in the tourism business in any fashion. They were just barely bouncing back after the COVID restrictions, now this. It breaks my heart and I do hope they bounce back from this sooner rather than later.
https://www.vrbo.com/1838001?adults...medium=email&utm_source=SYS&utm_term=20230123
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I think it is too early to say. Your landlord probably has one of the few legal vacation rentals on Maui since they generally are at resort properties so you should be fine and your tourist dollars will be welcomed. But from what I have seen, Lahaina basically no longer exists. Will they rebuild it? Who knows? But it will take time and it will not be the same.

I've always liked Lahaina even though I've only been there a few times. It was devastating to see it destroyed! I think a better question is will people still want to go to Maui?
 
SecondAttempt said:
I think it is too early to say. Your landlord probably has one of the few legal vacation rentals on Maui since they generally are at resort properties so you should be fine and your tourist dollars will be welcomed. But from what I have seen, Lahaina basically no longer exists. Will they rebuild it? Who knows? But it will take time and it will not be the same.

I've always liked Lahaina even though I've only been there a few times. It was devastating to see it destroyed! I think a better question is will people still want to go to Maui?
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For their sake, I sure hope folks will still want to go. We will go as long as the authorities are actively encouraging it. We don't want to be a burden and we love to spend money while there. We have very close friends who had an art studio/shop in Lahaina. I'm sure it's all gone now. I doubt they covered for something like fire insurance at this level. Lt. Governor said they had no idea something like this could happen and were totally unprepared to handle it.
I imagine most there have emergency supplies for hurricanes, and this may get them though the short haul.
 
We visited Maui and Lahaina in 1989. It was a great trip. I had seen the story about the fires on the news but did not hear about the banyan tree. That cannot be rebuilt.
 
Been twice in that area, shocked this morning to 36 deaths ;( thoughts go out to residence!!
 
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I saw this photo posted online from someone near Lahaina. It's pretty shocking.
 

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Terrible! Lahaina historic downtown was such a cool place.

Does this mean no access from airport to resort areas like Kaanapali?

Oh no! The famous Lahaina banyan tree was burned too.
 
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There are two threads on this (sad) topic, perhaps they can be merged?
 
threads merged
 
SecondAttempt said:
...Today the historic/tourist town of Lahaina was almost completely destroyed by a wildfire including the iconic 150 year old banyan tree...
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I was wondering about the tree. That's very sad.

I have been to Maui 3 times. It will not be the same.
 
donheff said:
I saw this photo posted online from someone near Lahaina. It's pretty shocking.
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I remember our car insurance adjuster asked us for the odometer reading. When I tried to explain that there was no odometer, they got a little testy and said they could not award a claim without it. The same company insured our home, and that agent told the one from the auto insurance department that he would gather that info for them when he came out to start his claim. I remember how he chuckled when I showed him the car and discovered I could laugh about it as well. Sometimes there's simply nothing that you can do to explain the definition of 'scorched earth', when it comes to the complete destruction of fire. Hurricanes, tornados, floods, all have wreckage. Fire goes beyond that. I remember getting jealous when I'd see images of people walking among their debris after such disasters and seeing things like family photos, albeit in frames with broken glass or some water damage. We didn't even have the ash to sift through, the authorites wouldn't let us back in due to the risks for exposure to other hazards that still existed. Not that it mattered, the fire was so total. I remember we had a wooden deck. In neat rows on bare dirt there were nails. No burned wood remnants, no ash, nothing but the soil stained a reddish hue and the metal fasteners laying in neat rows. Or key chain with no keys since the ring was steel but the keys brass, which melted at the intensity of the fire.
I so feel for these victims and their loss. With the limited resources of their small community, just gathering the materials to rebuild will be a barrier standing in the way of recovery. The toxic run-off when the rains hit will pollute the ground and run into the ocean causing further damage to the environment and to the economy of the area. The real tragedy though, is the loss of life. nothing can compare to that, all the rest is just 'stuff'. it's difficult to even think about those final moments when someone is killed in a fire and the terror they endured before the end. God rest their souls.
 
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Koolau, I was thinking about you in this devastation. Just a terrible thing to happen to the area.

Our wildfires aren't as devasting very often because of the rural setting on most fires.
 
We stayed at the Plantation Inn back in 2019. Sadly, it was a casualty of this fire also.
 
This is incredibly sad.
 
On our first time ever visit to Maui last year, we spent a few delightful hours in Lahaina. Terribly sad to see the destruction and loss of life there. Also, that beautiful irreplaceable Banyan tree gone! Living in the Sedona area, the horror of wildfires is something we think of but Maui would not have been a place I thought threatened.
 
So very sad. We were just there in June and had gone last August as well. So terrible to see the destruction of places we have fond memories of. If anyone has links to trusted fund raisers let me know.



We have a trip planned to Kauai next week. So hopefully, that will be okay. Don't want to be a burden on resources, but for good or bad, the Hawaiian economy needs tourists.


Praying for all involved. Casualties could still increase as they start sifting through debris.


cd : O(
 
We were in Maui in 2017 and have a plan to take our kids/grands next summer, hopefully now.
It is so sad to hear about this. Lahaina is such a fun town. And the Banyan Tree :-(, hope it is strong enough to come through.
My thoughts are with the beautiful island and the families/businesses affected.
 
Last night I posted on the weather thread that I hadn't heard from my brother, George, the one who snowbirds from his Kaanapali beachfront condo very near Lahaina. Since I read of the Maui cell phone outages, I didn't call him but sent an email instead.

Well, while I was sleeping, he FINALLY returned my e-mail!! Yay :dance::dance: He and his wife are in Madrid at the moment, and they heard from neighbors that his condo is OK except no electricity. That's better news than I thought possible. He's a frequent traveler like many on this forum, thank goodness. I am so glad that he wasn't there when the wildfires burned down most of Lahaina.

So sad about Lahaina and the rest of Maui and even parts of the Big Island burning. I stayed up most of the night listening to a 10 hours livestream about it on youtube. PFTD is to sleep as much as possible now that I know George and his DW are safe.
 
^^^^^
W2R, glad to hear your brother and his wife are safe!

DW and I were in Maui several times in the 1990s (thank you, Megacorp) and enjoyed it very much. It is sad to see the destruction of places we had visited.
 
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Route246 said:
Tragic black swan event. Reminds me of the Oakland Hills fire (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_firestorm_of_1991 ) Or was this a known risk or did it come out of nowhere? Oakland Hills fire was sort of known after the fact but not much was done prior to mitigate the risk. I remember it like it was yesterday.
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Reminds me of the Marshall Fire in late 2021 near Boulder Colorado. It took out whole suburban subdivisions and retail in an area that was mostly treeless plains. Wind and fire are a bad combination.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Fire
 
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