Maui job losses mount, but anti-tourism could block recovery

Tuesday, August 22, 2023 | By Allison Schaefers

Javier Cantellops, owner and president of Kihei-based Maui Dreams Dive Co. and Island Style Diving, said in the days since the deadly Lahaina wildfire, business on Maui has dropped so much that he already has had to furlough or lay off 40% of his staff.

“I lost $25,000 to cancellations in the first three days. Everyone canceled for this week and next week, and the week after that and for September and October,” Cantellops said. “People book three months or so in advance so if they are canceling for October, it be would be January or February before you saw anything that could make up for it. If it continues for two more weeks, there are people who are not going to be about to recoup.”

Cantellops and his employees are not alone. Since the wildfires, Maui is experiencing a sharp rise in initial unemployment claims, which hit 6,663 from Aug. 9-17, according to state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations spokesperson William Kunstman.

Kunstman said DLIR “cannot determine how many are disaster related at this time,” although since May initial claims had averaged 700 or 800 weekly. It’s the highest level of claims on Maui, the state’s most tourism-dependent island, since the tourism shutdown in the earliest part of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The loss of human lives — more than 100 thus far — drove the initial message from some officials, residents, social media influencers and celebrities strongly discouraging nonessential travel to all of Maui. People needed time to mourn, and space to mount a response to the mass casualties and devastation.

Now, however, as economic woes build, Gov. Josh Green, the Hawaii Tourism Authority and many Hawaii residents urge visitors to avoid only West Maui.

"There’s a push to drive the message that visitors are welcome to come to other parts of the Valley Isle, like Kahului, Wailuku, Kihei, Wailea, Makena, Paia and Hana. And certainly, continued tourism is encouraged on Kauai, Oahu, Lanai, Molokai and Hawaii island.

Mufi Hannemann, president and CEO of the Hawaii Lodging & Tourism Association, said tourism arrivals to Maui dropped 80% the week that the Lahaina wildfire started, and recovering occupancy and keeping other businesses afloat remains challenging.

“Yes, we must be sensitive to the plight of those suffering from the wildfires. But bear in mind that so many of the victims and their families depend on the visitor industry for their jobs and futures,” Hannemann said in a statement. “While they may have lost their homes and more, losing their incomes would only add to the pain and hardship of their situation. That’s why it’s important to keep tourism functioning to keep our economy alive and give our people hope and the ability to rebuild their lives.”

Economic softening has spread to still-open Maui destinations, and the losses are having a negative impact on the overall state economy, said state Rep. Sean Quinlan (D, Waialua- Kahuku-Waiahole), who chairs the House Committee on Tourism.

“General fund collections are dropping already. This is going to have a huge impact not just on the county of Maui but on the entire state,” Quinlan said. “We are in a state budget crisis. Right now people don’t realize it, but we are having to cut state government everywhere. We don’t know how we are going to pay for all this stuff.”

Jack Richards, president and CEO of Pleasant Holidays, said the company canceled $3.5 million in Maui business in the first 10 days after the fire. They also had to close four out of five concierge desks, and as of Friday had refunded $260,000 in prebooked activities.

“Travel to Maui has dried up. We aren’t taking a lot of bookings for Maui no matter what the time frame in 2023 or even 2024,” Richards said.

He said about 50% of travel cancellations for Maui are rebooking to other islands in Hawaii, but that doesn’t completely offset the losses statewide, and it doesn’t help Maui.

Cancellations in Wailea, Maui’s most exclusive destination where the average daily hotel room rate was $623 in June, have reached 95% for August, according to Quinlan, who said he heard that figure during a Maui economic update meeting.

“If we don’t do something soon or the situation doesn’t change, we will lose the vast majority of the small businesses on Maui,” he said.

Ryan Tanaka, chairperson of the Hawaii Restaurant Association, said about 102 restaurants were destroyed by the wildfires on Maui, and others across the county are feeling softening.

“Many of our restaurants will ebb and flow with the resort industry,” he said. “There’s no question that many still had not recovered from COVID.”

Tanaka said aside from rebuilding, a looming challenge for employers is that the unemployment tax schedule already is high, and additional layoffs, furloughs and reduced hours could trigger another increase in the schedule, which would be felt by employers statewide.

Editor’s Note: The full article can be accessed by visiting Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Hawaii’s largest news-gathering organization.

Loss of cultural landmarks in Lāhainā deeply affects community, Hawaiʻi historians

August 10, 2023 | By Kuʻuwehi Hiraishi

Devastating, heartbreaking and unbelievable — those were the words 46-year-old Torie Hoʻopiʻi used as she held back tears describing the wildfire damage to her hometown of Lāhainā.

"It’s devastating. It's like something you would see out of a movie that you can't actually believe that's happening to your hometown. People fleeing for their lives, jumping in the ocean, as they're watching Lāhainā Town Front Street and the harbor being burnt," Hoʻopiʻi said.

"I'm just like, 'Oh my gosh, that's like our historical town.' The first capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom is... gone."

Lāhainā became the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom in the early 1800s. It was a time of tremendous change for the Indigenous people of the islands, said historian Ron Williams Jr.

"It was the site of the first constitution that transformed Hawaiʻi from an absolute monarchy into a constitutional one. So from the arrival of [Capt. James] Cook in the 1770s until 1850, this influence that affected Hawaiʻi and helped it transform to a constitutional monarchy was that capital," Williams Jr. said.

The early 1800s also saw the arrival of missionaries, who established the first Christian church in Lāhainā.

Waineʻe Church, now known as Waiola Church, celebrated its 200th anniversary earlier this year. Kahu Anela Rosa said all reports indicate the church has burnt to the ground.

"It's just the structure, you know, it's really the people that make the church," Rosa said. "Several of our families have lost their homes, including mine. Four of my family members lost their home in Lāhainā. We were fortunate.

Editor’s Note: Visit Hawaiʻi Public Radio (HPR) to access full article. HPR’s mission is to educate, inform and entertain by providing services to Hawaiʻi, the nation and the international community that would not otherwise be available.

After Lahaina fire, 16 relatives crowd into one Maui house

Aug. 21, 2023 | By Julia Wick, Staff Writer 

AIKAPU GARDENS, Hawaii —  The 4-year-old girl sat in the center of the living room chaos, jamming two empty crayon boxes together.

“It’s going to be a house,” whispered Keona Valiente, who was perched precariously between a chair and the circular glass dinner table.

The table was crammed with tins of baby formula, a half-eaten bag of King’s Hawaiian sweet rolls, vitamins, plastic water bottles marked with initials in black pen — the clutter of 16 people under a single roof.

They had all been living in the three-bedroom house in central Maui since the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century laid waste to their beloved town of Lahaina.

A shirtless uncle washed dishes at the sink. Another uncle rocked a sleeping infant in one arm while scrolling his cellphone. Outside, the wind whipped through a rack of donated clothes left out to dry under the darkening sky.

Keona babbled wistfully to nobody in particular about Lahaina and things broken in the fire.

“The fire? What’d you say?” her aunt, Relyn Delfin, asked from across the table.

Aris Valiente carries his baby, Allison, at the Delfin family home in Maui, where he and other relatives displaced by the Lahaina fire are staying while looking for permanent housing.

Keona responded with a little sound somewhere between a whimper and a roar, prompting her mother, Rochelle Valiente, to glance over from a stool at the kitchen counter.

She spoke gently to her daughter, asking whether she was trying to build a house. But Keona didn’t answer.

The girl was suddenly vibrating with delight: Marshmallow, a Shih Tzu mix belonging to her aunt and uncle, had jumped on her leg.

Feelings can shift quickly when you are 4 years old. Especially when everything you own now fits in a single, Disney-character covered backpack.

Four of Relyn’s brothers, three of the brothers’ wives and six of their children — 13 people — had moved in with the Delfins since the Aug. 8 fire, when all four brothers lost their Lahaina homes.

A fifth brother and his wife also lost his home, but they’ve been staying at the Marriott where he works.

Relyn was the first of the Valiente siblings to come to Hawaii, migrating to Maui from the Philippines in 1997. Her husband Jowel joined her 10 years later.

Her siblings slowly followed her across the Pacific, building lives and families in Lahaina, where Filipinos make up about 40% of the population.

Relyn and Jowel moved out of Lahaina in 2012, but still commuted half an hour or so to jobs there and in neighboring Kaanapali.

They and their extended family bus the tables, prep the food, sell the souvenirs and tend the landscapes that made West Maui’s resorts feel like a manicured paradise, at least for the tourists who could afford the nightly rates.

Nearly all of the adults worked two jobs, juggling shifts to save for a better life and send money home to relatives in the Philippines.

—

Back in the living room, Relyn’s sister-in-law Beverly Valiente opened a can of evaporated milk and grabbed a jar of spices to take out to the backyard, where she was cooking a vat of chicken macaroni soup on a gas stove.

Her husband Knorlee was still out in Kaanapali, working an evening shift doing maintenance at the Outrigger hotel.

Jowel and Relyn’s 14-year-old daughter Aixa was in her room watching zombie movies on the queen-sized bed she now shared with her teenage cousins Crystal and Jennah. The girls sleep parallel to the head of the bed, so they can all fit.

Keona and her 4-year-old cousin Noah played like puppies on the still-folded sleeping mats in the corner of the living room, wrestling and kicking and hugging. Later that night, those same mats would be spread across the floor for five people to sleep. Two other people sleep on living room couches.

“No. His body,” Relyn said. “In the car. He’s dead.”

Everyone returned to clicking around on their phones. The network drama playing unwatched on the living room TV suddenly sounded very loud.

Someone switched the channel back to local news, where aerial footage of the disaster played on loop, interspersed with segments about where to find resources and donated goods. Everyone agreed it was strange, watching their lives on the screen.

Editor’s Note: For the full article, visit the Los Angeles Times website. Visit the GoFundMe page to donate relief funds for the extended family.

There was just so much to figure out, an unbearable amount. Someone had started a GoFundMe for the extended family, but so far it had raised only $650.

Massive mental health toll in Maui wildfires: 'They've lost everything'

August 21, 2023 | By Eric Westervelt

LAHAINA, Hawaii — The scale of the physical damage in the historic center of Lahaina is clear in its apocalyptic landscape of rubble, ash and debris.

But the scale of the inner damage can be seen in the 5-year-old girl that Maui's chief mental health administrator John Oliver saw the other day. The girl came with her mother into the Lahaina community health clinic, next to the main burn zone, clutching a green and purple plushy stuffed animal. She seemed withdrawn and afraid.

"I got down to her level and I asked her name and how she was doing, asked about her stuffed animal. And she just offered up that 'I'm sad.' And I said 'I'm so sorry, why are you sad?' And she said 'I'm sad because I saw a lot of dead bodies.'"

Oliver told the girl how very sorry he was, and tried to reassure her saying 'I want you to know that you're safe now.'

"She smiled and we continued to play for a little bit and she said 'you know I really miss my friend.'

I said, 'I'm sorry to hear that' and we talked a little more."

Soon the psychiatrist came in and the mom told Oliver that when her daughter says she misses her friend, it's her best friend. And she died in the wildfire.

Counselors here describe these early days of disaster mental health treatment as a kind of triage, psychological first aid for anguish that runs the spectrum of symptoms from deep sadness and sleeplessness to exhaustion, even breakdowns.

"They've lost family, they've lost their pets. They've lost everything," says south Maui clinical social worker Debbie Scott. She says for some who had to flee the flames, the initial shock is now giving way to wrenching anxiety, nightmares, anxiety, depression and sometimes anger, as the depth of the trauma settles in.

Survivors are still dealing with physical challenges like where they'll be living in the coming weeks and months. But size of the emotional and psychological toll here is coming into sharper focus as the need for mental health support is growing. Mental health administrator Oliver calls it "the worst mental health disaster in our state's modern history."

"There's a heaviness in the air that is — we're destroyed," social worker Scott says. "We're not going to have all the answers right now." She paused her private practice to help counsel the displaced at a community center in South Maui that's been turned into a temporary shelter. "We're coping."

Evacuees at the south Maui shelter where Scott is working this week were offered the chance to move from shelter cots to much nicer accommodations in hotel rooms or Airbnb apartments. But several people did not want to go, Scott says, including an older man who felt safer in the shelter. Both of his hands were fully bandaged from serious burns. Scott went over and sat with him.

"I called him by his name and I said 'listen let's see about what we need to do to make sure you feel safe enough to get on that bus'" to a better temporary home.

Sometimes it's the little things: he wanted his lost flip flops. Scott found them near the bathrooms. And it helped.

"It took some work but I did get him on that bus. And he was thankful to have his bags and he sure was thankful to have his flip flops. He needed his slippers, that was his need."

Compounding the grief here, hundreds are still listed as unaccounted for. In addition, people can't identify their lost loved ones. Only a few remains have been ID-ed so far. And some may never be found.

Editor’s Note: Visit National Public Radio (NPR) for the full article. NPR is an independent, nonprofit media organization that was founded on a mission to create a more informed public.

Native Hawaiians fear Maui wildfire destruction will lead to their cultural erasure

August 17, 2023 | CBC News, By Jackie McKay

'This is, for us, genocide,' says community leader Keʻeaumoku Kapu

Keʻeaumoku Kapu has been handing out water, clothes, and emergency supplies to families in need out of the Walgreens parking lot in Lahaina, Maui. He said it is a way to keep himself occupied while he grieves the losses of his community. 

"I'm afraid we're not going to recover from this," said Kapu, speaking to CBC from his cellphone at the distribution centre Monday. 

Kapu is a Kanaka Maoli (a Hawaiian word for their Indigenous people) community leader in Lahaina, and head of the Nā ʻAikāne o Maui Cultural Center — which was destroyed by the fire that ripped through Lahaina. 

While members of the community are still grappling with their immediate needs and the death toll from the fire is still being counted, Kapu said he is "frantic" to make sure he is included in the conversations that are happening about what is next for Lahaina. 

"I'm hoping that we can get over this hurdle, but at the same time the fear of being erased ..." said Kapu.

"Because our island is now turned into a cheaper commodity because there's nothing more important to save here, you have people coming in willing to buy burned-out places." 

Maui land grabs 

Kapu said his family and other members of his community have been contacted by realtors asking to buy their burned-up property. 

The office of the governor of Hawaii released a statement warning Maui residents about predatory buyers trying to capitalize on their fear and the financial uncertainty for those who have lost their homes. 

In a press conference Wednesday, Governor Josh Green said he is working with the attorney general to put a moratorium on property sales in West Maui. 

Social media posts from residents are pleading with people to not sell their properties to these realtors, fearing it will lead to Native Hawaiians being displaced from their homelands. 

A non-profit organization called Hawai'i Alliance for Progressive Action has started an online petition to call on governments to use their powers to stop Maui land grabs, support displaced families and ensure decisions are made with Native Hawaiians at the table. 

Kapu is urging people not to sell but is worried that people's fear and desperation may drive them to accept these offers. 

"You're gonna make our children tomorrow orphans within their own land," said Kapu. 

Lahaina holds deep cultural significance to the Hawaiian people and was once the capital of the Hawaiian kingdom. The city is where King Kamehameha III had his royal residence and modernized the Hawaiian central government with the creation of Hawaii's constitutional order. 

Many Hawaiians still recognize it as the original capital today, long after the capital was moved to Honolulu in 1845. 

The fire destroyed Lahaina's historic Front Street, where the cultural centre Kapu ran was located. Inside, the building held many cultural artifacts, like feather capes and helmets, implements, maps and documents. 

They were all destroyed. 

"Our place was a living place, it was a living museum. It was things that you could actually touch, books that you could actually read, maps that showed a lot of families where they originated from," said Kapu. 

But the loss is bigger than that. 

Editor’s Note: Full article can be found at CBC News. CBC News is Canada's publicly owned news and information service, reporting on every region of the country and the world to provide a Canadian perspective on news and current affairs.