Their house is no longer feels home after the wildfire
Lahaina Andres Revisited After the Wildfire When Their House Miraculously Survived But No Longer Feels Like Home
Andres proudly gives a tour of his home. He says it’s the playroom for his grandsons. It’s the first room in the house. The toys and books are all on the floor after the family fled the house as the fire raged.
Back in the kitchen of her family’s home, her dad points to a cabinet door covered with pictures: “This is my grandkids, this is my son with my granddaughter, my niece over there — her apartment burned down too, yeah,” he said.
But the Lahaina she grew up with is not coming back anytime soon. That’s something she realized this week, when she was advised by a federal agency to start looking for a long-term rental.
I want to help Lahaina get stronger. Going back to what it is — what it was,” she corrects herself, “when I was growing up.” Her eyes were well composed.
Source: Their house miraculously survived the wildfire, but no longer feels like home
Living in a multigenerational compound: the case for Maui, a mother-of-two living there for her daughter and her family
Even before the fires, she recalls, people were selling their homes for cash. Mansions were going up nearby. She’s concerned this tragedy will accelerate the trend. Her hope is to be able to raise her child here.
When her father bought the house in Lahaina 30 years ago, it was surrounded by fields of sugarcane and the family could see the ocean from the second-floor deck. It has been turned into strip malls and housing subdivisions over time.
Property is expensive here, she says, and childcare is not affordable – families in Lahaina rely on each other and it helps to live in a multiple household compound where there’s always someone to watch kids and make meals.
“It’s multigenerational. It’s multiple families, at least two different units, if not four and some maybe unpermitted structures,” she says. That is the only way we could live in Hawaii. That’s the only way we can live in Lahaina.”
“They want to open to the timeshare owners and for tourism,” she says, referring to hotel management at the place where her family’s staying, “so they relocated us to a less attractive sister property. But it’s fine.” She’s grateful to have a kitchen where she can cook healthy meals for her family.
“I’m living out of tote bags. She says she doesn’t know if we’re leaving since she’s living day by day. Already her family has moved hotels a few times. She’s been notified of an imminent move yet again.
The sun is out in Maui and there is a 60-year-old man standing in the kitchen on the ground floor with a grill and a stove. Large pots hanging from the fence. “This is my big place, you know, all my family live here,” he says.
Staring out from his second-floor deck, it’s hard to fathom the randomness of the wind-fueled fire on Aug. 8. The fire jumped his homes and a nearby cluster as it burned around his home to the right, left and back. “It’s amazing,” Andres says, still in disbelief.
The search and rescue operation ended in Maui last week. More than 380 people are still missing, and 115 are confirmed to have died. Even though official warnings suggest it is not safe, some individuals are returning to their homes even though they have been warned.
Source: Their house miraculously survived the wildfire, but no longer feels like home
Maui, a miracle survivor of the wildfire but no longer feels like home. The family’s house miraculously survived the fire, but not longer feels as like home
Damage to the roof is caused by the lack of water and electricity. The extent of soil contamination and the structural damage to the walls aren’t known.
Now, the whole family is scattered around Maui — mostly sheltered in hotels. The couple are sleeping in a hotel up the road. His wife is a seamstress. He says that they have to come back with running water.
He loads gallons of water into his car and drives three miles to his house to clean and to water his banana, papaya and avocado trees in the backyard and the potted plants around his property.
He feeds his animals as well. His chickens and dogs, he says, are keeping guard. The dogs bark protectively and the chickens chase each other pecking loudly.
Source: Their house miraculously survived the wildfire, but no longer feels like home
A Filipino man’s house miraculously survived the wildfire but no longer feels like home: A conversation with Andres and his wife, Melissa, after the tragic fires
When friends told Andres his house was still standing after the tragic fires, he didn’t believe them. But then when he saw it for the first time, he said, “I was so happy I was jumping, you know,” he paused to add, “me and my wife came in and we was crying, you know.”
Andres bought shingles. He’s already taken a ladder to the roof and patched it up. Supplies are limited because it is hard to find a contractor. He’s putting up wood to support the fruit trees that were destroyed in the fire.
Every day there is a new layer of ash in the house and outdoor kitchen pots. Every day, he works to sweep it away. “It’s hard, though, you don’t know where to start.” He’s not giving up, he said.
He looked at the living room and asked where we were going to go. I got big family, you know.”
A man with a hat on with a flag on it, explains how he grew it from three bedrooms to a compound with a cottage. The family has lived in the area over the past 30 years. Other family members sometimes stay at the home as well.
“Every day, you should see my family, my neighbor always crowded in my place.” His home was where he hosted karaoke parties and New Year’s celebrations. “We put tables out in the driveway and everybody dancing outside,” he says. His house sits in a cul-de-sac, away from the street: “Everybody can yell, my grandkids scream and nobody bothered you know,” he reminisced.
He doesn’t feel like going back to the Philippines is an option. He says that his family is in Lahaina. “This is my home.” He and his wife are American citizens.
Source: Their house miraculously survived the wildfire, but no longer feels like home
First Modular Units for a Lahaina Hope Village in Hawaii after Maui’s Wildfires: Jessica Arellano and husband David Sellers
“I just wish they wouldn’t go every day,” says Arellano with a sigh, “but I know they have to. And I know they’re just trying to clean, should they get the boot at the Sheraton, and they have to move home, you know?”
Arellano, her husband and 18-month old son are sheltering at a hotel. She’s a counselor at Lahainaluna High School in Lahaina and has been on administrative leave since the fire, though the district has called school staff back to begin planning the return to classes. Her husband works as a bellman and valet at a hotel.
She hopes her parents won’t eat the vegetables and fruits in the garden or the chickens pecking in the yard. She does not believe that the air is safe, and the food may be contaminated.
Arellano remembers the day the fire broke vividly. Black smoke can be seen first, then the fires. She and her baby got in the car and evacuated only to be trapped in traffic in downtown Lahaina, she says.
MAUI, Hawaii — Natural disasters create a desperate rush to find housing for people who lost their homes. After Maui’s wildfires, that effort got an unusual boost — from a massive military jet that delivered pop-up homes.
Now the modular units are transforming a grassy 10-acre field into 85 homes, with housing for around 250 people, according to the Family Life Center, a social service group working to create the Ohana Hope Village.
The first temporary housing modules arrived less than two weeks after fires hit Lahaina and other areas, said David Sellers, the principal architect of Hawaii Off-Grid Architecture and Engineering, a leader in the project.
A Family-Style House-Disaster Relief Plan for the Lahaina Firefighter’s Association (SALES), a Project of the Family Life Center
I got a picture of them loading on a plane. and I said, ‘Oh wow, this is real. Alright, let’s hurry up. He said they worked through the night and over the weekend to come up with the plan.
The Lahaina tragedy took just a short time to destroy hundreds of years of history and make thousands of people homeless. As fire survivors were in need of housing and essential items, the community immediately responded.
“Everything that’s happening here is is pretty much unprecedented,” Sellers said, citing the support he’s seen from individuals, business leaders, and state and local officials.
It was the CEO of the Family Life Center who said that the organization had already been helping families and elderly people who were affected by the fire.
“We decided everyone needs to have private and easily accessible bathrooms and kitchens,” Cumming said. “We began aggressively planning an approach for rapid assembly single-family style shelters.”
The biggest task is to connect the units to the utilities once the walls are up. They’re already insulated, a crucial detail in Hawaii’s heat.
The project still has a ways to go, but the interest is tangible: “We have already received 145 applications online,” Ashley Kelly, Family Life Center’s chief operating officer, told NPR.
A single module can be used to create twice the living space. The first phase of the plan calls for 60 modules — eight single units, and 26 double units, to cater to families. The master plan includes a playground.
The Maui Fire Rescue Mission: Pop-up Units spring up after Maui’s Disaster, giving families a place to call home
The pop-up buildings were supposed to be used to house people displaced by the war in Ukraine but arrived from halfway around the world.
The CEO of the US division of the company oversaw that part of the operation. In other humanitarian projects, Pronin says, his company has worked with the World Health Organization to deliver mobile hospitals, and to send housing to refugee camps in Ukraine, his home country.
The Family Life Center got in touch with Pronin’s sector and they couldn’t spare any stock, but one division in Hungary had some units available. Getting them to Maui took what Pronin calls a “small miracle.”
Hungary tapped the international and NATO-based Heavy Airlift Wing to send the housing modules to Hawaii aboard a C-17 cargo jet, using up 80% of the country’s allotted annual flying time in the organization, according to Pronin.
The work Maui does matches Pronin’s own mission. “I’m a fire survivor myself,” he says. “I was pulled out of a burning building in a very young age, and the building literally collapsed behind me.”
Source: Pop-up units spring up after Maui fire disaster, giving families a place to call home
Pop-Up Village: a pop-up village for young expatiles in Maui, Nga Pike, Moorpark, Maui
More modules are on the way. If they come by sea, they would arrive in early October. But if they come by air, they could arrive in Maui by the end of September.
The aim of the pop-up village is to allow people to leave the hotels and find more permanent housing.
