Letter from Lahaina: Reporting from Maui’s wildfire zone – by boat

Packed in a hurry, the raincoat came in handy after all.

I sat in a boat bouncing on the choppy ocean, a reporting effort to see a donation drop-off up close. The journey just wasn’t splash-proof. 

Through the polka-dot pattern of saltwater drops on my glasses, I made out the black trash bags at our bare feet. Labeled with tape, the sacks were full of food cans, baby formula, and tarps, launched from a boat landing in Kihei, on the southern side of Hawaii’s island of Maui. 

The effort was organized by a local business, Blue Water Rafting, which let me tag along. We headed west up the coast to people affected by the Aug. 8 wildfire that razed much of the town of Lahaina.

“Appreciate you guys,” says a man, waist-deep in water, helping move the goods to shore. 

As of today, I’ve been reporting in Hawaii for a week, with more coverage of the fire to come. Ten days on, the search for human remains continues. Of at least 111 people dead, six have been identified. 

With the disaster so fresh, the press has been challenged to report on Lahaina without easy access to the heart of the town. Safety and sensitivity issues abound – along with demands, subject to change, from local officials trying to do their own jobs well.

No amount of inconvenience to journalists compares to the heartbreak of Maui residents, reeling from not one but three major fires – the Lahaina one most destructive. I’m a guest from Colorado, with not just a job, but a responsibility to listen and learn. 

And to respect those who generously decide to talk with me.

Reporting with respect

Some folks on Maui can’t bear to look. Lapis waves still push and pull before the edge of town, once the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, now charred and stripped of color.

While philanthropic efforts continue, initial federal recovery aid is also underway, including more than $3.8 million in federal assistance to 1,640 households so far, which includes rental assistance. Hundreds of federal workers are on scene and seeking to debunk misinformation about aid. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are expected to touch down on Maui on Monday.

In response to frustration that Lahaina locals got no official notice of the fast-approaching flames, the former Maui Emergency Management Agency administrator defended the choice to not activate emergency sirens. He had said using the alarms – understood to be for tsunamis or hurricanes – could have caused people to evacuate in the direction of fire. The official, Herman Andaya, resigned yesterday citing health reasons.

A different type of storm, meanwhile, has descended on Maui. Local, national, and international media, including the Monitor, are here to cover the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. Grief has just begun, but there are also stories of generosity and hope. Some public schools on Maui are beginning to reopen. 

But just as journalists have pushed for access, local authorities have at times pushed back with appeals for respect. At a press conference last weekend, the Maui police chief chastised journalists for stepping on fragile burnt remains. 

The Monitor’s mission is to “injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” For safety and sensitivity reasons – especially as a reporting team of one – I have not tried to enter historic downtown Lahaina, close to the ocean, cordoned off for emergency workers. Instead, other journalists and I have pursued stories about the town beyond that area, through other reporting opportunities. 

In Lahaina’s spacious Napili Park, for instance, I found Kaipo Kekona holding two radios in one hand. He directs the arrival of aid shipments at a distribution site he oversees. 

Mr. Kekona is among Native Hawaiians who don’t identify as American. Distrustful of government, he’s promoting mutual aid from community members over U.S. support. 

“We are a strong community,” says Mr. Kekona. “We are all already organized and working with each other.”

As an outsider to a new community I’m covering, one way to try to mitigate harm is to anticipate how I might be wrong. That means seeking local knowledge.  

Various tips for precise news coverage have come from ʻAhahui Haku Moʻolelo, which is the Hawaiian Journalists Association, along with the Hawaiʻi chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association. Like others I’ve spoken with, they stress the basic point that the term “Hawaiians” should be reserved for Indigenous people on the islands, not to describe all residents statewide. 

No matter the disaster, journalism ethics calls for a trauma-informed approach that meets each person where they’re at. Some survivors readily offer up their story, wanting to recount each minute of a harrowing evacuation. Many don’t want to talk at all and may wish you weren’t here. That’s fine, too.

Others are somewhere in between, willing but still finding the words, searching for shreds of dignity as their world falls apart. One Lahaina survivor brought her hand to her mouth as she spoke with me, shy that she’d lost her dentures in the fire. 

Patience with people extends to patience with places. Last Friday in Honolulu on the island of Oahu and Saturday in Wailuku on Maui, I was not allowed inside emergency shelters run by the American Red Cross, following some mixed messages I’d received about access.

Though frustrating, I imagine survivors at a shelter may be seeking a semblance of privacy. Sure enough, ensuring survivors are “safe, comfortable and treated with dignity” is the priority, the American Red Cross wrote to me in response to a follow-up question. 

“In partnership with the county, it was decided that no media would be allowed access into the shelters out of respect to the residents and the traumatic experience they were, and still are, experiencing,” a spokesperson for the nonprofit says in an email. 

Just outside, however, I found sources like Chris Phillips who were open to sharing.  

Besides a wallet, “literally I have a backpack with, like, a couple pairs of boxers, some clothes, shorts, and pants, and tennis shoes,” says the surfer at the Hawaii Convention Center, formerly open for evacuees, where he’d been sleeping in Honolulu. Transitional lodging at hotels on Maui has started to become available. 

After waiting several days since the start of the fire, and as officials began to let residents back in despite ongoing health concerns, I found some neighbors uphill from the worst wreckage willing to speak with me. I met with them in my N95 masks without seeing a barrier or checkpoint to pass.  

Their homes are mostly intact, but husks of cars sit on some streets. Downed power lines lie like headless snakes. 

A man outside drags a beige trash can to the curb. It’s unclear who would pick it up – no cars can enter here. He looks across the street to where his neighbor’s house is gone. 

I head a few blocks over to where a source lives, her home a depot for neighborhood aid. I meet a woman who is leaving just as I arrive. I compliment her bright magenta blouse. 

In a dark time, she says, “you have to be bright.” 

She gives me a hug. 

Editor's note: This story has been updated, including to correct the name of the Maui Emergency Management Agency.