West Maui reopens to tourism after wildfires. Is it too soon?
| Lahaina, Hawaii
Heidi Denecke feeds her animals at dusk. As the sun dips below the neighboring island of Lanai, red shadows abound on Maui Animal Farm. Up here, it鈥檚 easy to forget. Almost.
Downtown Lahaina sits just a mile down the hill. Nearly three months ago, Ms. Denecke watched the flames consume the town. When a police officer ordered her to evacuate, she piled bunnies into her truck bed, wrote her phone number on her horses, and opened the gate.
Though her property did not burn and she recovered her horses, Ms. Denecke, like the rest of Maui, is still contending with the ashes.聽鈥淚t鈥檚 a slower coming-back process,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 going to come back, I think.鈥澛�
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onWest Maui is open to tourism after August wildfires devastated Lahaina. Residents are trying to find an equilibrium between meeting pressing economic needs and caring for each other.
Maui is tense right now, a combination of disjointed worlds. As displaced families still actively grapple with the tragedy that unfolded, a community struggles to find the right pace between reopening to the main driver of the economy 鈥� tourism 鈥� and retaining a space for its own recovery and needs.
Lionel Pascual and his family lost their Lahaina home in the Aug. 8 fires. Since then, they鈥檝e moved nine times, from hotel to hotel. Currently, the Pascuals are staying at Papakea Resort. They鈥檝e been told by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is providing them and other survivors with temporary housing, that they can remain there until Nov. 30. But they鈥檙e not sure where they will be sent next.
鈥淭he recovery effort is going very, very slow,鈥� explains Mr. Pascual. 鈥淭here鈥檚 no places for us to rent; that鈥檚 the biggest thing.鈥澛�
The Pascuals are only a few of the estimated 6,800 displaced residents across 34 hotels in West Maui, says Tamara Paltin,聽Maui County Council member for Lahaina. She worries that more visitors could exacerbate difficulties for a community still trying to find its feet. Between residents鈥� living in hotels and searching for jobs, and losses in infrastructure, 鈥渋t鈥檚 an unstable situation,鈥� says Ms. Paltin.
On Oct. 6, Ms. Paltin and the Maui County Council聽unanimously passed a resolution asking to postpone the Oct. 8 date set for Phase 1 of Hawaii鈥檚 plan to begin reopening West Maui. An started by a local group, Lahaina Strong, drew 17,000 signatures in favor of delaying.聽
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green stuck with reopening plans. Oct. 8 came and went. Several hotels north of Lahaina opened their doors to tourists. For a few weeks, no one really came.
The economic downturn following the August fires was sharper than many Maui businesses anticipated. Estimates that the Maui economy won鈥檛 recover to pre-Lahaina-fire levels until 2026, with accommodations, food services, and retail hit the hardest.
Following the fires, unused rental cars piled up on the airport lawn. Whalers Village, one of the most popular tourist areas, looked like a nightclub on a Sunday morning. The Kaanapali Golf Courses saw 10% of their normal traffic.
The decline in tourists affected the whole island. Ed O鈥橫alley runs Kuau Store in Paia on Maui鈥檚 north coast. The store operated at almost a 30% profit loss in September.
鈥淪aying, 鈥楾ake all the tourists out of Maui鈥� is like saying, 鈥楾ake all the restaurants out of New York City,鈥欌�� says Mr. O鈥橫alley.
Signs of recovery
Recovery has already started to happen though. As of Nov. 5, the number of daily domestic incoming flight passengers to Maui had to just above 4,000 鈥� down from the nearly 7,500 in early August, but a marked improvement from right after the fires, which bottomed out below 2,000 passengers.
Visitor numbers are expected to further increase.聽Phases 2 and 3 of reopening, encompassing the rest of the hotels and resorts north of Lahaina,聽began on Nov. 1.
Whether tourists should return remains a matter of controversy. Displaced residents still line up out the door of the Lahaina Civic Center waiting to receive Red Cross support. Community donation hubs are active, with one volunteer estimating that hundreds of residents come by daily seeking water and ice.聽
Cade Watanabe occupies the highest elected position for the Unite Here Local 5 union, which represents over 1,000 employees in Maui, including 150 who 鈥渓ost everything鈥� in Lahaina.
鈥淲e want tourism to reopen. Our members need their jobs,鈥� says Mr. Watanabe. 鈥淏ut at the same time, I think the community will be more supportive of the reopening if the real needs of the community on [the] island are being met.鈥�
The Hawaii Tourism Authority聽聽Maui visitors to pack 鈥減atience and grace鈥� and not to ask residents about their disaster experience.
At Hula Grill by West Maui鈥檚 Kaanapali Beach, sunburned visitors chat over drinks.聽
鈥淵ou don鈥檛 know what to do. You stay out of the way mostly,鈥� says Mike, visiting Maui from New Mexico for the first time with his wife. 鈥淭he locals are not very friendly. They鈥檙e in trauma; what do you expect?
鈥淵ou know it鈥檚 sad; you drive by it every day,鈥� says Mike, who declined to give his last name.聽
By 鈥渋t,鈥� Mike means Lahaina town, just a few minutes down the road.
Lahaina is bandaged, its wounds still visible but partially obscured. The town is closed. Construction fences line the Lahaina Bypass Road, but the burned coconut trees still stick out. Police cars, concrete barriers, and handwritten signs mark the outline of the decimated areas. Officials say 97 people lost their lives and over 2,000 homes and businesses burned in the infernos.
鈥淚 vote for less tourism鈥�
While many Maui residents seem to espouse a necessary-but-not-ideal mindset about tourism, several students from Lahainaluna High School voiced a different message.
鈥淗onestly, I vote for less tourism,鈥� said one of the students as he soaped down his wetsuit hood and slipped it over his head, getting ready to go spearfishing. 鈥淩ight now is just not the right time.鈥�
The students were confident that they could sustain themselves off the land and ocean.
Worries about water and land, both increasingly finite resources on Maui, continue to be major points of dialogue.
The Lahaina fires and subsequent debate over reopening 鈥渞evealed the cracks in the economic system,鈥� says Malia Akutagawa, an associate professor of law and Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. True recovery, she says, should be consistent with the Hawaiian ethic of sustainability.
鈥淭he Hawaiian way of doing things is prevention,鈥� says Professor Akutagawa, enacting 鈥渃are for the aina [land], rather than extracting from aina.鈥�
While discussions over tourists, resources, short-term rentals, and long-term effects will continue, the people most affected are those like Mr. Pascual who call Lahaina home:
鈥淵ou try to move on. You can鈥檛 forget. You do the best you can.鈥�
