United State President Joe Biden has visited Maui, the Hawaiian County recently ravaged by wild fire which killed about one hundred and twenty residents, with about a thousand others still missing.
During the visit, President Biden pledged support for the residents and assured that the federal government will help Maui for as long as it takes to recover from the wildfire.
Biden arrived in Maui on Monday, 13 days after fire ravaged Lahaina, the western part of the island, killing scores of people.
He told the survivors that the nation is grieving with them and the administration distributed more than $8.5 million in aid to some 8,000 affected families, including $3.6 million in rental assistance.
“We’re going to rebuild the way the people of Maui want to rebuild,” said Biden, adding that his administration would focus on respecting sacred lands, cultures and traditions.
The wildfire had broken out last week Tuesday and left behind a tale of woes and disaster, becoming the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in a century.
The County estimates over 80% of the more than 2,700 structures in the town were damaged or destroyed and 4,500 residents are newly in need of shelter.
The median price of a Maui home is $1.2 million, putting a single-family home out of reach for the typical wage earner.
The executive director of the non-profit Housing Hawaii’s Future, Sterling Higa, said the town is host to many houses that have been in the hands of local families for generations.
Presently, residents with insurance or government aid may get funds to rebuild, but payouts could take years and may not even be enough to pay rent or buy an alternate property in the interim.
Several Kauai residents spent years fighting for insurance payments after Hurricane Iniki slammed into the island in 1992 and said the same could happen in Lahaina.
Maui residents made desperate escapes from oncoming flames, some on foot though many could not make it alive.
Some are querying why Hawaii’s famous emergency warning system didn’t alert them as fires raced toward their homes.
According to reports, Hawaii emergency management records show no indication that warning sirens were triggered before the devastating wildfire.
The wildfire is already the state’s deadliest natural disaster since a 1960 tsunami, which killed 61 people on the Big Island.
The fire is also the deadliest U.S. wildfire since the 2018 Camp Fire in California killed 85.
The wildfire is especially heartbreaking for Hawaii because it struck one of its most historic towns and the onetime capital of the former kingdom, Lahaina.
The town was once the royal residence of King Kamehameha, who unified Hawaii under a single kingdom by defeating the other islands’ chiefs and his successors made it the capital from 1820 to 1845.
Kings and queens are buried in the graveyard of the 200-year-old stone Wainee Church.
Later named Waiola, the church that once sat up to 200 people was photographed apparently engulfed in flames this week.
Lahaina’s wildfire risk was well-known.
Maui County’s hazard mitigation plan, last updated in 2020, identified Lahaina and other West Maui communities as having frequent wildfire ignitions and a large number of buildings at risk of wildfire damage.
West Maui was also identified as having the island’s highest population of people living in multi-unit housing, the second-highest rate of households without a vehicle, and the highest rate of non-English speakers.
This month alone, the federal government declared six different fire disasters in Hawaii — the same number recorded in the state from 1953 to 2003.
Within that same period, Hawaii averaged one federally-declared disaster of any type every two years. Now it averages more than two in a single year, about a four-fold increase.
What’s happening is mostly because of changes in land use and the plants that catch fire, said the University of Hawaii’s Clay Trauernicht.
From the 1990s on, there has been a “big decline in plantation agriculture and a big decline in ranching,” he said.
Millions of acres of crops have been replaced with grasslands that burn easily and fast. “Climate change is going to make this stuff harder,” Trauernicht said.
—