Maui's catastrophic fire: a perfect storm of climate change circumstances

And a love letter to a place deserving of memory

A few weeks ago I wrote about being a climate change refugee, and then a follow up because of all the responses. It’s surreal that three weeks later, the beloved island I left in part because of global warming, has succumbed to the kind of apocalyptic fire event that I fled several times in California.

A perfect storm of scary circumstances brought on by climate change combined to burn Lahaina all the way to the ocean and scorch hundreds of homes and acres Upcountry and elsewhere: drought conditions after a wet winter led to overgrowth of large tracts of feral grass and shrub that had replaced regulated, watered sugarcane fields. Sparks, likely from electrical poles felled by dry, category force winds from Hurricane Dora, seeded wildfires all over the island. Though an initial blaze in Lahaina was quelled, overnight another spark flared up. This new blaze was the kind of moving, explosive fire that has eliminated whole towns and forests on the Mainland.

The firestorm rolled down the hill and engulfed the town all the way to the ocean. As of this writing, the death count is 53 67 over 80 and rising; the fire came on too fast for alarms to be sent up. People tried to flee and many who survived jumped into the sea and were eventually picked up by boats. The entire historic town is gone, leaving thousands homeless and businesses that were the economic engine of the island in ashes.

Photo by Adam Wilson on Unsplash

Probably you’ve heard all this on the news, so I won’t go into detail about the facts. When talking heads get together to brainstorm how this event could have been prevented, I hope instead they’ll apply themselves to planning a way to rebuild that will prevent future fires like this because, dear reader, there will be more of them—and not just on Maui, and the Big Island, currently affected, but everywhere that climate change related drought touches.

I am grieving, and when you grieve, you tell stories about your loved one.

Here is my love letter to a town.

Dear Lahaina,

In 1982 you welcomed me to Maui for the first time as a high school student from Kaua’i on a class field trip. Yes, Front Street was hot like everyone said it would be but striding along with my classmates from Island School on Kaua’i in shorts, a bikini top, and rubbah slippahs, I felt cool just being there, all the way from another island. I licked the sweet juice of a tropical shave ice from a sidewalk stand with my friends and had my photo taken with a giant blue macaw whose claws clung to my shoulder and left marks and I smiled anyway.

None of us had money but we window-shopped the sparkling jewelry, acid-green tees, and painted whale art of the tawdry little stores and dreamed of being rich enough to buy such things someday. We clowned and climbed in the giant banyan tree in the center of Lahaina, taking pictures of each other with yellow plastic disposable waterproof cameras as we clambered up and walked along limbs the size of a city block, swinging from huge dangling roots like Tarzans and Janes in the days before people worried about the tree’s longevity.

(Image via Twitter/@Donald_from_HI)

I remember walking into the dim stone recesses of the nearby historic old jail with its thick walls embedded with lava stone. I touched the walls, so cool and thick and strong, and wished I could spend the night there, secure behind rusty old bars, instead of in the hot wooden A-frame of the YMCA camp down the dusty road outside the town boundaries.

Ah, Lahaina, you were always a refuge for kids of all ages.

In 1986, on our honeymoon, the Pioneer Inn beside the famous banyan tree was one of the few hotels we could afford on a shoestring holiday cobbled together at the last minute from an offering basket passed around at our Hanalei potluck reception.

We spent the first night of our honeymoon at the Kula Lodge upcountry, freezing in February weather we hadn’t packed for and keeping warm by staying in bed for the day, as people do on honeymoons.

Lahaina’s sparkling water and warmth were welcome after that as Mike showed me the places he lived and played before moving to Kaua`i: a stint working at Kimo’s and other restaurants while driving taxi in his partying twenties and living in a condo in Honokowai at the beach.

Lahaina was his playground and surf his priority, with favorite places to shred being Honolua Bay and Windmills. We explored their crystal bays and sparking waves in the water together, and wandered the town hand in hand, licking sweet shave ice from a stand between kisses. The music from the Pioneer Inn’s bar below our room vibrated through the floorboards as we plugged our ears with rolled-up toilet paper to sleep.

The money we’d gathered at the reception ran out our last night on Maui, and we slept in the pineapple field above Honolua Bay, in a gulch above the ocean where we could see the silhouette of Molokai on the inky purple horizon. Locals trolled our rental car that night, but left the windows intact—and then a heavy squall woke us in the long grass, huddled under our beach towels. We ran to the car through pouring rain, past spiked rows of pineapples, slopping through mud slick and red as blood.

We nearly got stuck getting out; the little white rental car slipped and slid as I tried to accelerate while Mike pushed and shouted from behind. Red Lahaina mud flew up and coated us, until we finally made it, lurching a few feet at a time, onto solid ground.

We rolled into Lahaina in the small hours of the morning and found a twenty-four-hour laundromat, manned by nodding drunks asleep on plastic chairs. Wearing swimsuits, we washed our clothing, towels, and shoes, and then showered cold in the deserted park at the harbor as dawn broke over the town. We treated ourselves to a good breakfast with the last of our cash at the old and dignified Lahaina Grill with its wrought iron and black-and-white décor, before heading to the airport.

We moved to California that very day to begin our life together, all our worldly possessions in a couple of thrift-store suitcases.

I wish I could say we were getting along, that our honeymoon adventure was funny and romantic.

Instead, that last day on Maui felt like the crazy homeless-style things I’d grown up with on Kaua’i and I wondered, dear Lahaina, if we would ever be prosperous enough to spend a night anywhere better than the raucous Pioneer Inn.

Discovering later that both of our underwear was tinted orange from the mud in the washer, we were finally able to laugh.

In 1999 we visited you, Lahaina, as new residents of Maui with our children, aged ten and eleven. We’d just moved to the island from Michigan with the ink drying on brand-new college degrees we’d sacrificed much to earn in the Midwest. Delighted to return to Hawaii, we hoped Maui would be kind to us in this next chapter of life.

We found a rental in Kula nearer our new jobs, and then, celebrating our move, we brought the kids to see the banyan tree, eat shave ice, and pose with the ageless giant blue macaw. I was thrilled that nothing much had changed on Front Street. Our kids swarmed over the banyan tree, just like I had in my day, and we enjoyed the new addition of an ongoing art fair beneath the branches.

Over the next twenty years we lived on Maui, you, dear Lahaina, were always a favorite destination for special times: surfing at the pier, family gatherings at the parks, kid birthdays out at Bubba Gump’s overlooking the ocean, anniversaries dining on the roof at Fleetwoods or fancy fare at Longhi’s as we’d toasted the years and the sunset to the sound of live island music.

We finally achieved that measure of financial comfort and were able to rent a good hotel room to chaperone the kids’ prom out in Ka’anapali as they wrapped up high school. Life was good, Maui was indeed kind, and you, dear Lahaina, were always a part of celebrating that.

You became a part of my writing, dear Lahaina, as my interests meshed with yours and my career in mental health gave way to my passion for mystery writing in 2010. Mike became successful as a photography and woodwork artist, with his work featured in several galleries, and I fell in love with the vibrant arts scene in the town, the weekly Friday Art Nights when everyone strolled Front Street and sipped wine and ate pupus given out by the galleries. I constructed a plot around art smuggling in my 2012 novel Black Jasmine, enjoying the chance to drop a few names of artist friends into the story while creating a fabulously evil gallery owner connected to organized crime.

In 2016, I heard about Moku’ula—the buried royal island site of King Kamehameha III’s palace compound inside the city limits; a special sacred island that was buried by dirt fill from building the Pali Highway. For fifty years, Moku’ula lay hidden, used as a baseball diamond.

My imagination was captivated by this, and I visited the site several times, interviewing archeologists and Hawaiian activists seeking to restore the site. To bring attention to it, I constructed a plot using all I learned that became a thriller called Wired Hard, a personal favorite among my books.

Thank you, Lahaina, for yielding your hidden secrets to those who sought your restoration. For once, I’m glad your precious relics, royal bones, and lost canoes are buried deep where fire and flood cannot reach. Hopefully, they’ll be safe there until they can be properly exhumed and the area restored at last to its former glory.

This last is one of the only silver linings to be found in the current tragedy: there exists, now, hope for a full and proper restoration of Moku’ula and the development of a more Hawaiian culturally centered Lahaina that is built around the centerpiece of its native people’s history.

That, dear Lahaina, will be my prayer in the days to come.

P.S. Hit the little <3 if this post moved or educated you, and pass it on. Dear readers, share your thoughts, story, and memories in the comments so we can witness each other.

P.S.S. If you want to donate to help, I recommend Maui United Way. Donate only to reputable organizations!