LAHAINA, Hawai‘i — Enough grass has returned to the front of Scotty Rickard’s lawn in the Paunau subdivision of Lahaina that his grandchildren can bring out the swimming pool to play, as they did on hot summer days before the Aug. 8 wildfire took their home and devastated the community.
Rickard said he also is excited to see green shoots emerging where he planted ti plants along the mostly gravel-covered property’s edge. He likes to water the new growth.
“My grass is growing in the subdivision. I’m planting ti leafs, too,” he said. “That’s what makes me come here. This green growth, it means a lot. It feels like somebody is living here again. It’s not like one disaster zone.”
It will probably be another year before Rickard and his wife, Pikake, are able to move back to their street in the Lahaina Wildfire Impact Zone, where flames took the home they had lived in since the late 1960s and where their extended family also lived and lost homes.
In the meantime, he said, they are thankful for the recovery efforts to restore the burned area and for each milestone that gets the community closer to repopulating Lahaina.
Restoring safe drinking water to Lahaina is perhaps the most critical recovery milestone met in advance of Thursday’s first anniversary of the disaster.
Rickard has had safe drinking water for four or five months; however, he said removing the unsafe- drinking advisories from L-5 and L-6, the last two restricted areas in the impact zone, is “what everybody has been waiting for.”
Maui County Department of Water Supply Deputy Director Kimo Landgraf spoke Friday during a county-organized, escorted media tour to showcase the recovery work that is ongoing in Lahaina. He lifted the county’s unsafe-water advisory, which had been in place since Aug. 11.
Landgraf said in the more heavily fire-damaged areas of L-5 and L-6, there were 1,945 lots, of which 1,310 were affected by the inferno. He said these areas had 1,293 water service laterals, which provide water from the water main in the street to individual properties.
Over 900 service laterals were sampled, and some 830 were cut and capped, which protected the system from contaminants but prevented property owners from accessing water, according to Landgraf. He estimates the county still has to replace some 700 of the cut service laterals.
Maui Mayor Richard Bissen said in a statement, “This is one of the most important milestones that our community has reached, well ahead of schedule, thanks to the determined and tenacious efforts” of the water supply crews in close collaboration with the state Department of Health and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“This is a momentous accomplishment that will benefit those living in standing homes, and assist our residents who are making plans to rebuild,” Bissen said.
Another important impact zone development occurred on Thursday when the state Department of Transportation opened access to Honoapi‘ilani Highway between Keawe Street and Hokiokio Place. Lahaina town remains closed.
The Maui Emergency Management Agency responded to DOT’s highway changes by adjusting security posts on county cross streets. The county said in a news release that “MEMA’s adjustments are the first portion of a phased approach to lifting access restrictions in other parts of the impact zone over time.”
Officials expect a high volume of commercial debris removal between Papalaua and Shaw streets, and said the security checkpoint at Lahainaluna Road will be used only for designated debris removal vehicles.
Cleanup efforts
“We’ve been at this almost a year now, and that remembrance comes next week,” said Toney Raines, FEMA federal coordinating officer, during Friday’s media tour.
Raines estimated the federal government has provided about $3 billion in assistance, of which $1.2 billion has been directed toward debris removal, site cleanup and infrastructure repairs, which are ongoing with partners such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Col. Eric Swenson, USACE recovery field office commander, said during Friday’s media tour that debris has been removed from 98 percent — or 1,372 out of 1,399 — residential lots and from 40 percent of commercial properties, or 64 out of 159. He said some 3,500 vehicles also have been removed.
It was hard to hear Swenson over the cacophony of heavy machinery, which he called “the sound of progress.”
Swenson said the removal is ahead of schedule, which he attributed to the main contractors hiring so many locals, including cultural monitors and archaeologists from Hawai‘i and, more important, Lahaina town and Maui.
“I’m proud to say that all of the crews are vested in the safe and efficient completion of this debris removal operation,” he said.
He said locals are motivated to get back “to the homes that they may have lost and their families lost in these tragic events of Aug. 8,” and so they can see “Lahaina town rise out of the ashes into its former greatness and in a much more resilient way as we deal with what Mother Nature has for us in the future.”
The future is still unfolding for the impact zone, but some 600 residents recently noted changes during the county’s “Remembrance Rides” that took residents on buses that wound through the burned areas over a three-day period in late July.
Lahaina resident Trixy Nuesca-Ganer, who lost her uncle and all her belongings in the Lahaina wildfire, said in a county news release that the ride through the impact zone was a significant part of her healing.
“I cannot speak for anyone else but myself and my daughter. We haven’t been through the town since last year,” she said. “It was overwhelming, but it was good. For me, it starts my healing — especially coming up to August 8th. It is time to let go. And rebuild to what it can be.”
