In recent days, loss has led the news in Lahaina, Hawaii. Wildfire tore through the historic West Maui town a week ago today.

The deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century has claimed at least 99 lives. As stunned locals grieve, search and rescue continues. As do donations and hope.

Once the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, Lahaina has been home to culturally significant sites for Native Hawaiians. Those include the Na ‘Aikane o Maui Cultural Center that burned.

Six museums run by the Lahaina Restoration Foundation also fell to the flames. But though their artifacts are gone, not all is lost.

“The beauty is, COVID actually gave us time to digitize a large amount of our archives,” says Kimberly Flook, deputy executive director of the foundation.

The pandemic “allowed us to take better care of our collections,” she adds. “If this fire had happened three years ago, we would’ve lost the information as well as the object.”

Once finished, the digitized collection, spanning the 1820s through 1980s, will include missionary family letters, photos, and records from the sugar plantation era. That includes the names of millworkers, whose diversity shaped the island’s identity: Native Hawaiian, Asian, European, and beyond.

“If someone puts in their grandfather’s name, it will pull up any document that he’s referenced in,” says Ms. Flook.

The work should eventually appear in the extensive, free Papakilo Database from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. (A preexisting app, Lāhainā Historic Trail, offers another chance to explore from afar.)

Online archives can’t bring back Lahaina, of course. But they can help ensure its history survives as more than memory.