In the ruins of Lahaina, a surfing legend leads a volunteer army to get supplies to survivors
Archie Kalepa has spent his life in the ocean. He’s a legendary surfer and world-renowned pioneer of techniques to rescue people when colossal waves crash down on their heads.
So his first glimpse of his still-smoldering hometown was, of course, from the sea.
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Roads into Lahaina were closed when Kalepa flew into Maui two days after a wildfire had leveled much of the historic town of 13,000. But a network of friends spirited him onto a boat and raced him up the coast.
As the boat came to shore and everyone on board took in the blackened hillside, the melted cars, the teetering columns of ash that used to be homes, they started to cry, Kalepa said. Sitting in the back, with the stuff of nightmares fast approaching on the horizon, Kalepa swore to himself he wouldn’t break down.
“Be strong, be strong, be strong,” he whispered.
He knew he was about to wade into the arms of friends and family and neighbors who were, “lost in the reality of what happened to them, not knowing what to do or where to begin,” Kalepa said.
They would need someone to rally around.
Less than a week later, Kalepa’s frontyard has been transformed into a supply depot to rival those established by the government and aid organizations. Life-sustaining staples — water bottles, gas cans, tents and food — are stacked neatly, and everywhere.
The stuff is free to anyone who stops by, especially people from the neighborhood, which sits on land where, by law, you have to be at least 50% native Hawaiian to buy a house.
While public officials come under scrutiny for their failure to prepare for this disaster and a faltering response to what’s become the nation’s deadliest wildfire in the last century, close-knit networks of Indigenous Hawaiians, like Kalepa’s, are mounting efforts to ferry supplies and people with needed expertise past the government roadblocks into their neighborhoods.
They include doctors, nurses, chefs, firefighters and in some cases journalists invited in to tell the story.
Unloading the stream of trucks rolling into Kalepa’s cul-de-sac — conventionally suburban except for the breathtaking ocean views — was an informal battalion of fit, bronzed bodies: surfers from Argentina, off-duty firefighters from other parts of Hawaii, even a contingent of U.S. Navy SEALs.
They weren’t officially deployed, one of the SEALs told a reporter, but they had trained under Kalepa in ocean survival and he’d made a lasting impression. So when they heard he needed help, they just came.
Kalepa, 60, gained early fame as a pioneer of tow-in surfing, using a jet ski to gather enough speed to catch the towering, terrifying, 70-foot waves known as “JAWS” that slam into the north shore of Maui.
Today, Kalepa travels the world training people in water rescue.
He was working in Lake Tahoe when the fire consumed Lahaina. He woke up at 4 in the morning with an odd sense of dread, he said, and started seeing all the posts on social media. A relative called to report that his house was gone — not accurate, thankfully.
“But I was just shaking,” Kalepa said.
Before he got back to Lahaina, he started calling friends, telling them he was going to need bottled water, gas cans and tents. The distance worked in his favor, because electricity and the internet were out in the town and communication from there was almost impossible.
When he finally got home, Kalepa cleared his frontyard, waited and hoped. Within 24 hours, the critical supplies he asked for started showing up. The flow hasn’t stopped since.
