Episode 43: The State of The Maui Fires

Summary

With our US rentals on Maui, we were fortunate to have skirted the recent wildfires.  BUT, we are also general contractors and as a family, we create community.  The global outreach in response to the August 8th wildfires on Maui has been overwhelming.  In today's episode, I explain the factors leading up to the two fires on Maui, talk about the warriors who are the Hawaiian people, and where the recovery stands just two months later.  

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Full Episode Transcription

Welcome to my life as a landlord where we untangle all things housing and educate the curious. If you're

looking for some entertainment with some honest, awkward conversations, you've come to the right

show. I'm your host, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury. This is my life as a landlord. Welcome to it.

Well. Hello there. Welcome to my life as a landlord. This is episode number 43, the state of the Maui Fires. Oh, if

you're watching on YouTube. My life is a landlord as a channel and wanted to. 1s When was mapping

out this? When was mapping out this podcast, I could not help but stop and call one of my dearest friends

and just say I'm having a hard time writing this episode because I'm crying. This has been so

devastating. What's happened on Maui? Many of you may not know that our businesses are based on

Maui, where general contractors on Maui, and you know, we provide housing. That's what we do.

Thankfully, we personally did not sustain a loss. It was really close, though. Really close on the other.

Not so media advertise 1s fire in Kula upcountry Maui was right near one of our one of our properties

and just absolutely scared to death about that. But thankfully we did not have a loss and there were many,

many people that couldn't say that right? So we're going to talk about this. This is in other Saulsbury

Adventure topic day, but I didn't really want to talk about landlord or tenancy stuff. Today I really

wanted to talk about the state of the fires. It seemed that literally, the global response to the fires was so

huge that this was really important, that I have a podcast that's about the Maui fires. So very, very

important to me. I chose this time today and this topic because of the horrific tragedy on Maui recently. I

wanted to make sure that that you knew what the latest, the latest was, were US based, but we also have a

Canadian company that that also used the build. And we have rentals in Canada that I remotely self-

manage from Maui, which is unusual, but let's get into the fires. So you might have only seen the media

aspect of the fires, but I'm going to talk about the background leading up to August 8th, 2023, which is

the day of the Lahaina and the fires. But I also want to talk about the Hawaiian people and the mindset of

the Hawaiian people as we move forward in this recovery from the wildfires. And then we'll talk about

where the recovery status is now. Okay. 1s So leading up to August 8th, Mike and I actually happened to

be in Canada. We were at his dad's celebration of life, and so there was about a week long that we were

with family in British Columbia, and we knew this hurricane was going to skirt underneath Hawaii, the

state of Hawaii. So it was going to be about a thousand miles. It was going to skirt around. But I've seen

this before. Remember, I've been on Maui a long time, and I've seen this before where these hurricanes

do, like this tail whip thing. And I there was lots and lots of warning. There was wind warnings, there

was rain warnings, there was potential flooding warning warnings. And we're not there. But, you know,

of course my phones are going off. My social media alerts are going off. Everything's going off saying,

hey, this is this might you might get some damage here, you know, prepare for power outage. Prepare.

Okay. So forecasted heavy winds, small watercraft advisories. They knew and they were adver they were

telling everybody the rain winds flooding was coming August 8th started. It started early at 4 a.m. Maui

time with an evacuation due to an out-of-control wildfire fire up country. And for those of you who are

familiar with Maui, it was a subdivision called Kula 200, which is in Kula, but it's sort of in the traffic

part of upcountry, where all the roads kind of come together. It was right in that one area, and at 4 a.m.

there was an evacuation notice because the fire was coming. And so if you can imagine the fire

department, from what I understand, they were going door to door trying to get people up, trying to get

people out. Now we're cool of 200 is is right next to King Catholic High School. So one of the major

high schools on the island, and there's not many high schools on the island, but, you know, this is one of

them. And of course, this wildfire was was heading towards the high school as well. And so immediately

the high school was canceled. The whole place was in chaos trying to get out of the way. Ultimately, this

led to other schools being canceled. And. Thankfully there was no issues. They did were able to contain

that fire, but that woke up that day with cooler 200 being evacuated at 4 a.m. Maui time, which is really

that's really unusual. I've never seen it like that before. 1s So what ended up happening? The day

progressed again. This hurricane continues to scoot by. It continues more and more winds, strong winds,

stronger winds. And we expected at our house. We expected power outages. Now Grant was not on

island when this happened. But I've got all the remote cameras. I can see everything going on and I knew

there was some trees going around, but nothing fell. There's like no trees fell on the power lines, no

power outages at our house at all that saw. But we had no issues, which is surprising considering how

many other issues there were on the island. As mentioned, Mike and I were in Canada and we were all

together with family, and of course, I was just I couldn't stay off social media because I'm seeing my

family, my community, my ohana on Maui. 1s And I had actually told Mike said, these fires, if they're

cooler 200, they're going to jump and they're going to jump quick. Well, I was right. And I'm sad that

was right. And it was surprising how right I was. There were multiple fires around the island, multiple

places all day long, but nothing seemed to get too out of control. And that that was on the West side. That

was on upcountry as well. It just seemed that there was a lot of fire activity in general that day, just lots

of stuff going on. And then around 3 p.m. it's alleged. And I say alleged because there is a lawsuit going

on. So I'm going to continue to use that word. It's alleged that around that the power lines on the West

side started getting blown over. Power poles were breaking, power lines were hitting the ground, they

were sparking, started blocking some of the major highways. And this was happening more and more and

more. And so you had all kinds of traffic problems. You had these sparks and the wind was carrying the

embers and it just took off, right? Fire took off in the grass and it started at the top. Or for those of you

local to Hawaii on the mauka side, meaning the mountain side away from the ocean. So the mountain

side. But it was blowing down from the mountain to the ocean. So it started at the top, the mauka side of

the Lahaina bypass. And the wind carried the flames further, faster, hotter. And it was spreading faster

than you could run. It was spreading 60 miles an hour and it was gusting to higher. Now remember.

You can't as a human. You can't stand up in 80 miles an hour. And it was sustained 60 miles an hour. I

mean, I've heard many people say that. 1s That it was the strongest wins they've ever experienced in their

whole life. So think of something for a moment when you have seen blacksmith shops or maybe

shows about blacksmith shops, and they've got what they call a forge. They've got a hot spot where they

can put their metal that they're working on to heat their metal, back up that forge. Guess what's in it? It's

feeding it by air, right? Feeding it by air. And so it keeps that forge nice and hot. Well, guess what

happened on Maui and the Lahaina fires. It went down the mountain and it was gaining speed, and it was

getting hotter and hotter and hotter like a forge. And this is why you're seeing cars melted into the roads.

The roads melted, right. Just absolutely unbelievable the 1s the devastation and how hot the fire was. All

told, the winds took off. They decimated 2700 structures, including 2200 homes in Lahaina. But must tell

you that was not the only fire that day. That was the most advertised. And most media covered fire.

But it was not the only fire. There was fire on the Big Island. There were several homes burned, but no

lives lost. So thankfully on that. And in Kula, upcountry, where had mentioned not in Kula, 200 jumped

again. Fires started for different reasons, but there were 19 homes lost in Kula. No, no lost lives though.

So that's a good thing. In Lahaina right now it looks like the the Lost Lives count is about 100. So why

was Lena so media covered? Why? Why is it captured our heart well, come up with a couple ideas. In

my opinion, Lahaina was a time capsule in modern day. It was several chapters of Hawaiian history read

all at once. Everything from Lahaina, the capital of the Hawaiian people, before Honolulu, to

missionaries, homes, schools, the first typewriter west of the Mississippi, Lahaina Luna High School, the

first high school west of the Mississippi. And that banyan tree planted 150 years ago, planted as an

infant. Now a charred giant fighting for breath of life. As mentioned, the death toll in Lahaina is just

under 100. And I don't know if that's right or wrong, but I can tell you that the people of the big island of

Kula and of our lost Lahaina, they're also fighting for life. But you see, the Hawaiian people are not new

to fighting. To them, the the fighting is a way of life and has been for centuries. They fought for food, for

land, combating weather waves, and they fought for women. They fought for their partners. The

Hawaiian people can be summed up in one word warriors. The wildfire tragedies revived and reminded

the Hawaiian people of their fighting framework that has been passed down generation after generation

and continues on. I don't know what happened in those other natural disasters. I wasn't there after

Hurricane Katrina and didn't see what followed the last earthquake, but I knew even when I wasn't on

island, I knew that the Maui community would rally and take care of their ohana any way they could.

And they did. After the smoke cleared on August 9th emerged the stories of escape and survival.

Emerged the 10th, and food and water and blankets and ice and phone chargers and anything else

brought by boat from anywhere possible. The fight was on and it was on social media, the news channels

and every language and my phone, my phone, my personal cell phone lit up for two days by email, call,

text, Facebook message, LinkedIn message, and any other way you can think of me and Mike's entire

Rolodex on our phones. Our whole contact list checked in to see if we were okay, and share a memory or

two of the last time we were in Lahaina. Remember that the Hawaiian people have a long history of

fighting. In the late 1900s, the white man or Europeans overtook the Hawaii Hawaiian state. Much like

Russia has just invaded Ukraine. The only difference is Russia invaded Ukraine on social media. Back

then the Marines came in and captured the Hawaiian Queen. And basically they told her, if you escape or

you fight us, we're going to start killing your people. Though she she reluctantly stayed. No one got

killed, but they got captured. That leads to today. Hawaii is the 50th state. It's the only property that has

been a kingdom, a republic, a territory, and then a state. But how does all this relate to the fires? The US

has many resources to help any of its citizens following a natural disaster. Some of these include the Red

cross, Federal Emergency Management Agency lots and lots of others. Now I have to be careful when I

say this. Because I want to be grateful and help with all the resources that have arrived to Hawaii in

general, and am grateful. It's difficult, though, when Hawaiian people are accepting help and taking

orders from non Hawaiian folks, and when the non Hawaiian folks arrive to Maui and they can't

pronounce the Hawaiian place names like Makawao, Lahaina, even. And began dictating the recovery,

how the recovery would occur. The help is and was needed, but without knowing, it's hard. It's hard for

the Hawaiian people to interact with people who are non Hawaiian. Oh, remember, the Hawaiians are

fighters. And I've seen this. I'm a fighter, too, even though I'm not necessarily Hawaiian. But here's the

trick. And this is what I'm most proud of. What's happened after the wildfires is the local community

assets, the groups that existed in Maui before the fires, that were trusted agencies, before the fires,

became the most trusted entities for help. And so, yes, the Red cross and FEMA and many, many other

agencies that help is is needed. It is welcomed. But it seems that Big Brother things like entities like

Hawaii Community Foundation and Maui United Way especially have become the most respected guess

resource. I'm not sure if that's the right word, but that's that's kind of what I mean. I'm on the board of

directors of the Maui United Way, and this is where I started crying. So must tell. You have to kind of

keep the the script here, because I just want to make sure I can keep it together here. I'm on the board of

directors for Maui United Way, and if you don't know what United Way is, it's a nonprofit that in

essential is a money steward for other nonprofits in your local area. Wherever you're listening to this

podcast, in whatever, whatever location, it is very likely that you have a local United Way somewhere in

your state or your region or your your city. You've got a United way that was that will help you, that will

help nonprofits in that local area. Maui United Way specifically has 33 partner not for profits on Maui.

So there's. Maui United Way is the umbrella steward for helping other nonprofits that are much smaller,

most of them after the fires. As mentioned, two entities emerged as local leaders Hawaiian Community

Fund and Maui United Way Maui United Way specifically because see that one of the most often, Maui

United Way has assisted in emergency financial assistance as well as the Hawaii Community Fund wide

Community Fund, has also given given money to Maui United Way with help from many, many other

sources as well. So want to be clear about that. But Maui United Way is near and dear to my heart and

has assisted in emergency financial assistance to both individuals and entities, specifically other

nonprofits. And I have no doubt that Maui United Way will be a bigger part of a longer recovery. Now

United Way board is Hawaiian. It's Hawaiian at heart. It's Hawaiian. Many of them have know several of

the board members that speak fluent Hawaiian. It's pretty amazing. And we're warriors to. So let's talk

about the status of the recovery. Just yesterday, the first homeowners were let back into Lahaina for the

first time since the fires. First time there's been many insurance claims. A lot of cleanup of debris has not

even started yet. Lots of people are asking, when can we rebuild? But can also tell you that there's a lot

of grateful people that have had the assistance of people like FEMA, who have had the expertise to go in

and find family assets like rings and, you know, anything they could find at someone's house, they would

go in and they have the expertise and like the hazmat suits to go in and search for this stuff at these

people's residence, which is really incredible. And so this is the type of help that the Maui community

needs is we need FEMA, we need Red cross, we need some of these because they have a skill set that

local communities members very likely don't have. So it's very interesting to see how this is all worked.

But everybody's asking the same question when can we rebuild? And it's looking like it's going to take a

while. But one of the things I noticed right away, if you've seen some of the media coverage in

Lahaina, the harbor, the harbor has a loop. So there's one aspect that's closest to Lahaina, and then it has a

finger goes out into the water as a shore break that has been dredged. And then the harbor is in between 1s

the the boats that were on the outside. Many of them survived, many of them. The boats were fine, but

the inside boats, the boats closest to the land, almost all of them, caught fire and sank in the slip. So it is,

it seems to me that the harbor is going to be recovered, that they're going to be able to salvage the boats,

revive the Marina, and actually be able to use the harbor regardless of the buildings on Front Street and

the other subdivisions and the lost homes. It seems like the harbor can be salvaged pretty quickly. And a

stone's throw away from that harbor is the the world famous banyan tree. The banyan tree got burned that

it got charred. It was just a question of is it going to be able to recover? It appears that there are signs of

life. Goodfellow brothers is watering the tree incessantly every day. They're doing all kinds of things to

the ground. They're aerating the ground. They're trying to get the tree to recover. They have the state

arborist come out and look at the banyan tree and direct the recovery, and it appears that it's working.

There is little buds on the top of the tree. Somebody flew a drone, and you can see some of the greenery

that's starting to come out of the charred branches, and that's phenomenal. And so this banyan tree is very

much leading the charge of the phoenix of rising through the ashes. Let's see, what else are we talking

about? Who knows when we're going to rebuild? I don't know. And the changing, the changing of the

coastlines has been a discussion. The rising sea levels has been a discussion on Maui and in Hawaii in

general for many, many years. With global warming, you've got coastlines raising six inches or a foot in

periodic times. And so now with Lahaina so close, so close to the coastline. I have no idea how this is

going to work. I don't know if they're going to allow. The cute little hangover shops that were hanging

over the the shoreline on Front Street. Don't know if they're going to allow him to rebuild, I don't know,

but this is the question that everybody's asking is can they put it back the way that it was? I don't know. I

don't know if it's going to be like that. It probably will never be the same. And remember, I'm a general

contractor on Maui, and there was problems in red tape about getting building permits before the fires.

Now it's even more Hawaii. Governor green has issued state six state of emergency proclamations due to

the wildfires. And this is very interesting because Governor Green is actually a medical doctor. He's the

only sitting governor that is a medical doctor. And so in these emergency proclamations, he has

suspended many aspects of building permits to try to help get emergency housing done. But in those

proclamations, it's also suspending some of the licensing so that you can get more medical professionals

to Maui as well and to Hawaii, because these are all for a lot of these are for Maui, but it's statewide as

well. Very interesting, these emergency proclamations. 1s But in general you're getting lots and lots of

media about China. 1s Now again, Lina was not the only fire and the media is actually a good thing.

You've had all kinds of people visiting Oprah, the Rock, Jason Momoa, US President Joe Biden and his

wife Jill United Way Worldwide President Angela Wilson came recently. And this is all equating to

support and money, which is great to help with the recovery. So where are we at at the moment? So the

debris removal hasn't even started yet. They it appears that the the FEMA experts have gone in and

confirmed and removed human remains. And so now they've let people go back to their their burned

homes and try to salvage whatever they can. But the debris removal is the next step and don't know what

they're going to do with that debris, because now it's considered think it's considered hazmat, right? It's

considered hazardous material. So don't know if they're going to dig a new landfill on Maui specifically

for that or they're going to barge it out of there. I don't know what they're going to do with the debris

itself, but they can't do anything until the debris is removed. And it is very likely going to include all the

streets, the sidewalks, the pipes in the ground. Anything that impedes the redevelopment is probably

going to have to be taken out. And so we're literally, literally going to have to start at ground zero,

absolute zero from not one water line in the ground, nothing. Maybe some stakes on where the property

corners are and that's it. So I'm not really sure. But here's some interesting things that have happened.

And because I've been on Maui for so long, I know some of the other points of interest that were that are

in Lahaina that have either survived or reemerged because of the fires. So there is a bit of a silver lining,

just a tiny one. For those of you who saw Lahaina, you may have noticed that there is a public there was

a public library down by the harbor. Well, in the water behind where the public library was is something

called the birthing chair. The birthing chair. And it's right at the shoreline, right at the waterline. And it

looks incredibly uncomfortable. But what it was. It's two rocks, two big rocks that are right at the

waterline. And this is where the Royal Hawaiian ladies would go and have their babies in the water.

Now, this is rocks. So the fire didn't take this. So the birthing chair that has had such history in the alley,

the royalty in Hawaii, it's still there. Right. And so this is some of the stuff where it's like some of these

stories haven't they haven't been they're not concluded. It's just the next chapter. And so the birthing chair

is still there. There's a couple of other big sites that were either covered up and then developed on. There

was no there was one royal site and forgive me, don't remember what it was, but there was one royal site

in Lahaina that a softball field ended up being built over it. Well, all the fire went through there. And so

there's a question now, maybe we can recover some of these old Hawaiian historic sites. I don't know.

Again, I have no idea what we're going to end up with in this recovery effort. But what I do know is that

it's going to take a long time, and it very likely won't ever be the same. Right? I'm so. I'm heartbroken,

absolutely sick and heartbroken over the August 8th wildfires. But I know the Hawaiian people will

continue their fight as warriors as we get through. We just started this. We're just in the infancy, the

beginning of the beginning of the beginning of the recovery. So here's your call to action. All my

podcasters and YouTubers out there. 1s Donate to either your local United Way or, if you're so inclined,

to the Maui United Way. If you're not into donating money, volunteer your time. They will take either for

Maui United Way. It's very simple. Go to Maui United Way. Org you can donate your time. You can

volunteer your time. We'd love to have you. I'm a very proud board member and really appreciate your

listening to this update. As we go through this, as we transition out of this episode and we wander into

the next episode, let me know your comments and questions in any of the Facebook or LinkedIn groups

that I'm on, or you can email me. Learn at my life as a landlord. 1s Remember. Comments, questions,

suggestions lead to the content in the next episodes. Next week's episode is a landlord perspective that

I've been getting quite a bit. And this does this does pertain to Maui, but many other places as well.

Coming up is episode number 40 for short term versus long term rentals. We talked about this last week

with Wendy and we're going to talk about it some more. Thank you so much for joining me on my life as

a landlord. Super appreciate your time and hope you learned something. Aloha.

Thank you for joining us this week. To view the complete show notes

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Thank you again for joining me, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury in this episode of My Life as a Landlord. I'll see you next time.