LAHAINA, Hawai‘i — A year after the deadly August 2023 Maui fires, costs are stacking up for the removal of debris, environmental remediation, finding temporary housing for those displaced and the herculean task of actually rebuilding communities and returning people home.
At a news conference held in Lahaina on Friday — a day after the anniversary of the fires — state, federal and Maui County officials gave updates on the status of recovery efforts a year later. Gov. Josh Green told reporters that “12,000 people-plus were displaced, or 3,000 properties were destroyed. The estimated cost of the overall recovery will ultimately exceed $12 billion.”
But officials said progress has been steady, and reported they’ve managed to clear 99 percent of debris from the 1,500 residential lots in Lahaina that were razed by the flames.
“So within the year time frame, virtually all of that then has been cleared,” said Green. “The debris has been cleared safely so that now in year two, which began today, you will be able to see the mayor take action to give (construction) permits out. … We’re also now rapidly clearing the lots for commercial activity, because we hear from people all the time, ‘What will it look like? What will Front Street look like?’ Well, those decisions will be made through (Mayor Richard Bissen) and the Maui Council and leaders here in the community.”
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Col. Eric Swenson said that beyond the removal of the residential debris, USACE has so far removed 50 percent of commercial debris, “making way for families and friends to begin rebuilding their homes, lives, livelihoods and their town.”
Green announced Aug. 2 that a $4 billion global settlement had been reached over liability for the wildfires in Upcountry Maui and Lahaina in hundreds of lawsuits. The agreement would settle approximately 450 lawsuits filed by plaintiffs, including homeowners and businesses.
The proposed agreement involves seven defendants: the state of Hawai‘i, Maui County, Hawaiian Electric, Kamehameha Schools, West Maui Land Co., Hawaiian Telcom and Spectrum/Charter Communications. The defendants were accused of neglect on a variety of fronts, from poor facility maintenance, hoarding water and ignoring repeated warnings that it all contributed to the risk of brush fires.
On Friday, Green said that “when those resources come to the people of Lahaina, they will be able to rebuild their homes.”
But not everyone is happy about the settlement. In particular, some fire survivors wanting answers about what exactly led to the fires and the chaos that followed hoped those details would emerge at trial. Now some are concerned that people whose decisions may have contributed to the deaths of at least 102 people and the destruction of thousands of homes will use the settlement to walk away from accountability.
When asked about the concerns in the community that the settlement and anticipated redactions in an upcoming ATF report into the cause of the fires could leave survivors without closure, Green said, “This question gets asked a lot of me, in public and private: Who’s responsible? Well, we’re all responsible, all of us, for caring for our people and for everything that’s in our state.”
“We are committed to releasing all the reports that come through,” Green added. “There won’t be finger-pointing. There will be discussions about how we can make things safer. … As to what some people say — ‘Isn’t it getting kind of the cart before the horse?’ — the answer is simply no. It’s our responsibility to help people recover sooner rather than later. And so that’s the reason that we came forward with the settlement.”
Green argued that going to trial could have allowed the many lawsuits to drag on for several years with uncertain resolutions. He asserted that this way, survivors are guaranteed compensation and can begin rebuilding much sooner. Payments are expected to begin in mid-2025.
“No decisions in court are going to help people heal,” said Green. “But we’ll, you know, we’ll explain everything. Honestly, there’s this great anticipation of these reports. (But) most of us all have a pretty clear idea of what happens and what happened that fateful day: A terrible storm spread the embers of a fire, and even though our firefighters were heroic, it was impossible to get ahead of embers that were landing because of almost 80 mile per hour winds. That’s what you’re going to see.”
Officials said that as they look to rebuild, they are also preparing for future fires and looking for new ways to contain and fight them.
Bissen said the Maui Fire Department has added 29 new front-line firefighting positions and that the Maui Emergency Management Agency has added 13 new positions, including ones in Hana and on Molokai. He said that MFD has also “increased equipment and utilizing newer technology, such as a thermal drone that we used in a recent fire up at Crater Road to help us detect underground hot spots.”
Since August 2023 federal officials and tech companies have been working with firefighters across Hawai‘i field-testing a variety of new equipment designed to help detect and fight fires. The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate Undersecretary Dimitri Kusnezov said that since the 2023 fires, firefighters in Hawai‘i — and especially on Maui — are “leading the way in this next generation of technologies, which we expect to be more broadly deployed across the nation and probably globally.”
U.S. Fire Administration chief Lori Moore-Merell said that her agency worked with the International Association of Firefighters on a series of training with members of MFD on suburban and urban fires and structure-to-structure fire spread.
She said the training was geared toward training the firefighters to be instructors themselves “so that they can train the entire fire department on strategies and tactics.” On Aug. 19 the Fire Administration will hold another course for 30 candidate instructors to build and lead interagency teams to respond to disasters.
On Maui, students began their first day of school this week. Students of King Kamehameha III Elementary School, which was destroyed in the Lahaina fire, are attending a temporary school built by the Army Corps of Engineers for $78.8 million in 95 days and opening in April. At the news conference, Green announced that the state is working on creating a program for this year in partnership with billionaires Marc and Lynne Benioff to offer grants to those working in Lahaina’s schools and that officials would “give more details this coming week.”
“People will receive up to $5,000 if they work at the schools as teachers or support those schools, because we know that they’re buying backpacks and laptops and iPads and food for the children that were otherwise displaced,” said Green. “So everyone who’s worked in those schools is going to receive a grant because of what they have done and what they will need to do this coming year.”
A year later, federal agencies are now gearing up to establish a long-term presence for many years to come. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said the agency would set up a permanent recovery office on Maui.
“We have hired the director for that, which should be on board soon,” said Criswell. “This office is going to be right here in the community and will be staffed by members of your community to help with this recovery process. These are going to be people that you know and you trust, and understand your community, that will make sure that your needs are because they know what those needs are.”
