CORRECTION: A previous version of this story had an incorrect date for the Lahaina wildfires. The Tribune-Herald regrets the error.
Gov. Josh Green on Thursday announced the reopening of West Maui to visitors on Oct. 8, as well as plans for a new, temporary campus for King Kamehameha III Elementary School.
Green unveiled those plans during a press conference about recovery efforts from the wildfires that decimated Lahaina on Aug.. 8, leaving 97 people dead.
“We’re welcoming visitors back to our state,” Green said. “Why? Because we learned a lesson in COVID. If you’re not clear about when people can come back, if you’re not clear about when you open, the mainland and the world don’t understand. … But we have to start. I think October will be a very slow month — which it is, automatically, in Hawaii. And I think by the time we get to Thanksgiving and Christmas, people will be grateful we have enough revenue to keep them in their jobs, pay for the school we have to build, pay for other services, and take care of people. And you’ll see that will speed our recovery for those who have suffered so much.”
According to a report by the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization titled “Wildfires Deliver Heavy Blow to Maui Economy,” visitor arrivals on Maui plunged by nearly three-quarters, as travelers responded to the horror of the fires and early appeals to stay away.
Maui lost more than $13 million in visitor spending each day in the weeks following the fire, according to UHERO, which said the planned Oct. 8 reopening of unaffected West Maui resort areas will restart tourism in the region, although UH economists expect recovery there to be gradual.
The elementary school was damaged beyond repair in the fires. The state will lease privately owned land north of Lahaina town where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will construct modular classrooms and additional buildings.
“I think it’s central to healing to have education for our keiki,” Green said. “… We know that parents want stability and normalcy for their keiki, and we, the (Department of Education), and our federal partners are working to bring that quality of life back to them as soon as we possibly can.”
Green said the federal Environmental Protection Agency will oversee cleanup of affected areas, much of which contain high levels of toxicity in the soil in the wake of the fires. He said the Army Corps of Engineers will then take over for the following nine months.
“That contract is going to be a big one,” Green said. “It’ll be somewhere between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion, keeping in mind that the federal government has already authorized a 90-10 split with us. They’ll pay at least 90%. And we’re hopeful, if we do have large costs, that they’ll ultimately pay 100%. We’ll lean on our congressional delegation for that extra 10%.”
Department of Business and Economic Development Director James Tokioka, who also serves on the Governor’s Joint Housing Task Force, praised the “resilience and perseverance of the people of West Maui, from the shelter survivors to more than a thousand ILWU hotel workers that lost everything.”
“We moved, in the first two weeks, 5,000 people from the congregate shelters into hotels. According to the Red Cross, that’s never been done before … for all of the different disasters that they service,” Tokioka said.
DBEDT, the American Red Cross, Federal Emergency Management Agency and private-sector partners housed nearly 8,000 survivors and hotel employees in more than 2,400 units across some 40 properties. The Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corporation placed more than 300 families through its Hawaii Fire Relief Housing Program, which has approximately 1,200 property listings.
“We’re pleading to homeowners,” Tokioka said. “If you have additional units, please put them into this program, because we need … to move as many people as we can from the hotels … into more comfortable shelters like an Airbnb, like a vacation rental — places that have a kitchen.
“And in the meantime, we want everyone to know that we do not condone properties that are asking survivors, including their own hotel employees, to leave without another housing solution in place. … We want to make sure that every survivor has an opportunity, wherever that may be, for shelter.”
Tokioka said the state transferred $12.5 million on Sept. 12 to Maui County to support businesses that were impacted.
“We want to make sure that the money stays on Maui. It’s not very easy, as you can imagine, getting money to many of these businesses who have lost everything,” he said.
FEMA has received 15,931 registrations for services, Green said, and will support more than 18 months of rental assistance for survivors.
In addition to housing, the state, through the Department of Human Services, is offering financial assistance to survivors through federally funded programs including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (D-SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
“We have a lot of money in that fund, and it’s for temporary needs,” Green said of TANF. “We’re going to go to $100 million off the bat. We intend to make those monies available to the many thousands of families that have lost everything. I think there are at least 3,000 families that are in pretty deep trouble … but we’re not sure yet what that final number will be.
“But that, combined with what philanthropy can do, means that we can produce a lot of resources.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.