The former capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Lahaina is a place with a rich landscape, sacred to Kanaka Maoli or Native Hawaiians, one that long has provided a connection to their ancestors.
On Thursday, the town of 9,100 lay in ruins, destroyed by the largest natural disaster to hit Hawaii since Hurricane Iniki in 1992.
At least 53 people have been confirmed dead by Thursday afternoon, and with fires still raging, officials warned the death toll could rise as the search for survivors continues.
With cell towers on the island of Maui still down, family members of residents have been taking to social media pleading for help in locating their loved ones, while grassroots volunteers have been posting lists of those who are found and those who still need to be located.
Kanani Adolpho, a Maui resident who is volunteering at the War Memorial Complex shelter in Waikulu, one of many across the island, has spent the last 24 hours posting live updates on Instagram sharing a list with names of people who have turned up at the shelter. At one point it was four pages long and contained both locals and visitors.
“My heart is sore, but I don’t want to break down in there because these people need my strength right now,” she said in one of the live videos on Instagram before returning to the shelter.
Other organizations, including the Maui Lani Mormon church also posted lists, and a longer Google document started circulating on Facebook with over 2,800 names, some of which had been labeled as located, many who have not.
According to Lahaina resident Jen Mather, who originally shared the document, many of the names would be recognizable to the tight-knit community. In the early 1800s, Lahaina was the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Over the centuries, the small port town became a tapestry of different eras, a port town for the whaling industry and a location for Hawaii’s many sugarcane plantation operations. Over time, during colonization and the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893, the town’s Kanaka Maoli population was joined by descendants of people who came from China, Japan, the Philippines, and other countries who came to work on the plantations – a way of life, that some say was tough but manageable through kinship with the community.
Residents on Thursday feared the death count would rise beyond the 53 dead that had been announced that day. Lahaina resident Kekoa Lansfield told Hawaii News Now on Wednesday that there were still bodies in the water and on the sea wall, where many had fled to escape the flames.
Lansfield, who lost his home in the tragedy, said he had returned to Lahaina to help pull people out of the inferno after evacuating his family from his own home.
“That’s what we do in Lahaina. We don’t leave people behind,” he said, adding that Lahaina was in need of a lot of help.
With two other wildfires still raging in other areas of the county, more than a 100 firefighters have been working around the clock to tame the flames, officials said. Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) are expected to arrive Thursday, while US president Joe Biden has issued an official disaster declaration.
Meanwhile, officials were working to evacuate the tens of thousands of travelers who had been vacationing on the island. Maui is a top destination for tourists from around the globe, so much so that overtourism has been a point of contention as residents have made rallying calls against the impact on the culture, community and environment.
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More than 11,000 travelers have been evacuated from the island following the fires, according to the director of Hawaii’s department of transportation. The Hawaii tourism authority has urged all non-essential travel to the island be canceled to leave resources available for residents. An emergency proclamation made by acting governor Sylvia Luke, will last through the end of the month.
Tijana Brien and her family who were visiting from Moss Beach, California, were a few of those to leave. Before she was able to fly out, she said, people at the Napili Surf Beach Resort took her family in, alongside other local families. Before she got to another part of the island, she had no way to get in touch with anybody, she said.
“My heart hurts for Maui,” Brien wrote on Facebook, adding “the number of people I met over the last 24 hours, who had no idea if their homes or families were ok, but still extended kindness towards our family have left me speechless.”
Across the Hawaiian islands, residents are organizing to provide financial and emergency relief, soliciting donations of clothing, supplies and food.
O’ahu non-profit Ke Kula Nui O Waimanalo is sending over two 20-foot shipping containers filled with donations. Grassroots groups on Hawaii Island, despite dealing with their own active wildfires in the last week, are also sending over another shipping container filled with items, and most recently a location coming from Wilmington, CA.
Some of those taking financial donations are the Hawai’i Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund and the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement in collaboration with Native Hawaiian rights non-profit Kākoʻo Haleakalā and the Alakaʻina Foundation Family of Companies.
In one of her update videos on Instagram, Kanani Adolpho said “It is our duty as human beings to help one another, because that’s what we do.”
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