FEMA Estimates $5.5 Billion to Repair Damaged Areas in Maui

A curfew was in effect overnight Friday night in parts of Maui affected by the fires, coming hours after the first residents were allowed to return to their homes in Lahaina to begin taking stock of the destruction.

Officials said the tally of the dead was expected to rise as federal help arrives to begin searches inside badly damaged homes and buildings. “We are expecting bad news over the next couple of days,” said Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii. The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that it will cost $5.52 billion to rebuild in Maui County.

Three days after the fire leveled the historic town of Lahaina in western Maui, with no official list of fatalities, many family and friends were still frantically seeking news of loved ones, their search complicated by spotty cellphone and internet connections. One family resorted to passing out photos; others posted pleas online.

On Friday afternoon, officials began allowing residents of Lahaina to retrieve what belongings they could, and a long line of cars were lined up at roadblocks on the outskirts of the town, which had a population of about 13,000.

“I came back, and there was no home,” said Sarah Salmonese, a 33-year-old emergency room nurse, who sat for hours in the rubble that was until a few days ago her second-story condo, steps from the ocean.

Here’s what else to know:

• Questions are mounting about whether officials could have warned residents with more notice or evacuated them sooner. Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii told CNN that he had authorized a review of the emergency response, and the state’s attorney general, Anne Lopez, said she was launching a “comprehensive review” of the decision-making before the fires. Some local officials said the speed of the blaze made it “nearly impossible” to have alerted residents.

• The local police chief in Maui said Thursday that 1,000 people were missing, but history suggests that that number might not be a good estimate for the final tally of victims. In 2018 the number of missing after the deadly Camp fire in California swelled to 1,300 in the early days before 85 people were ultimately confirmed dead.

• Viewed from above, the ashen and charred aftermath of the burned areas is in striking contrast with some lush, landscaped resorts that remain standing and the turquoise ocean. Much of Lahaina was an old whaling village built from wood, and a long line of abandoned, burned cars in its streets showed how little time residents had to escape as flames overtook the town.

Thomas Jeffery, a wildfire expert with the CoreLogic reseach group, said many of the houses in Lahaina were “very vulnerable” to fire. “Many of the residential properties in Lahaina appear to have wood siding, and a number of them have elevated porches with a lattice underneath,” he said.

If history is a guide, it may be too early to tell exactly what recovery might ultimately cost, said Roy Wright, a former FEMA official who now leads the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, a research group.

“Every estimate we hear during the first week is someone’s best approximation, and it’s wrong,” he said. “We just don’t know enough yet.”

The rebuilding of Lahaina and other affected areas of the island will likely be a long haul, he said, and for now, the primary focus should be on emergency relief and recovering the dead.

He added that the initial cleanup after a massive forest fire is something that Hawaii, thousands of miles away from the mainland, has rarely had to do, which may complicate and draw out the recovery. Scorched structures, electronics and plastics will require extra precautions to clean up because of toxic substances that are often released.

He said he expects people whose homes and businesses were destroyed to start filing insurance claims, adding that they should feel confident that insurance will pay those claims.

But how the recent wildfires will shape future insurance policies or rates is still unclear, Mr. Wright said.

“Hurricane is still your primary risk. Wildfire is going to be a secondary peril. It is, but clearly, it’s not a peril we can ignore,” he said.

The entire risk-management system — including insurers, emergency managers and land use planners — will likely consider the recent wildfires and revisit their earlier plans, though a single event is unlikely to fundamentally change overall risk policies, Mr. Wright said.

According to Hawaii’s emergency management plan from last February, officials considered the risk of wildfires to people “low.”

But given the devastating human toll of the wildfires in Maui, other communities across Hawaii will likely ask themselves if the same kind of disaster could happen in their communities. And in many cases, the answer will be yes, Mr. Wright said.

“This risk is real,” he said.

“With climate change, the seasons are changing,” said Ms. Loui, who runs Kula Sandalwoods Inn & Cafe with her siblings in the hilly Upcountry of central Maui. She said fires had never been a big worry, but now “the dryness is a lot longer and a lot earlier.”

“The moisture in the air — we don’t have the rain patterns that we used to.”

The Kula area avoided the total devastation seen in Lahaina, a 35-mile drive to the west, where dozens of people died and building after building was destroyed. But the damage in Kula was significant all the same. On Friday, three days after the fire started, crews in Kula continued to deal with flare-ups as the thick smell of smoke choked the air. The landscape was a study in contrasts: A burnt-out building next to another with no visible damage, verdant forests giving way to smoky fields of blackness.

Back on Tuesday, Ms. Loui said she had been indoors working on new curtains for her rental cottages, popular among visitors to nearby Haleakala National Park, when she stepped out to investigate what sounded like a falling tree.

“Instead of finding any tree falling,” she said, “all I saw was smoke.”

Ms. Loui, whose parents started Sandalwoods more than 30 years ago, spent the next hours in a frantic fight against nature.

“Hose, stick, shovel — anything that we could use” to beat back the flames, said Ms. Loui, who is in her 60s. But as the flames continued to build, she said, “I’m coming to the reality that we might lose this place.”

She said a Fire Department official came and told her about what had happened across the island — “This section of Lahaina is gone, this section is gone, this section is gone” — and implored her to leave while she still could.

“The battalion chief, he saved our life,” Ms. Loui said. “He came up and said, ‘There’s going to be a time. Don’t be heroes. You’re doing a great job protecting the property lines and keeping down the hot spots, but anything can change in a second.’”

As the flames closed in, she made it to safety in a police squad car while the officer yelled at others to evacuate immediately.

As she fled, Ms. Loui feared all of Sandalwoods would be destroyed. When the flames subsided, she returned to something still awful but less dire. The storage building was a complete loss. The backside of the restaurant sustained damage, but the building was intact. The rental cottages were smoky and in need of significant repairs, but they were still standing, too.

Ms. Loui said she saw the fire as further evidence that “climate change is real; this doesn’t happen for no reason.” Federal scientists have warned that climate change poses numerous risks to Hawaii, including increased potential for wildfires, threats to the water supply and coastal erosion.

At Sandalwoods, Ms. Loui said she was now reconsidering energy use and thinking about switching away from propane-fueled appliances in the restaurant. But she also saw a need for societal-level shifts, like restoring forests, planting native vegetation and growing more food locally.

“You hopefully vote in smart politicians that can effect change with their policies,” she said as firefighters continued to work nearby. “And you get involved.”

FEMA says that nearly 1,500 residential buildings were destroyed in the Lahaina area.

The plan, prepared by Jamie Caplan Consulting, a Massachusetts-based firm that specializes in natural hazard mitigation, did not specifically address why West Maui was at such an elevated risk. But it did offer some broader reasons for the probability of future wildfires in the county that turned out to be somewhat prophetic about the current situation on the island.

“Dry, windy conditions with an accumulation of vegetative fuel can create conditions for a fire that spreads quickly,” the document, which runs more than 1,000 pages, said.

“Wildfires could become more frequent in the future as drought conditions become more frequent and more intense with climate change,” it went on to say.

The report stated that 80 wildfires directly affected the county between 1999 and 2019 — an average of about four fires each year. The largest fire to burn in Maui County, it said, was the one in Kaunakakai in 2009 that scorched more than 8,358 acres on the island of Molokai.

“Most of the county is highly vegetated,” the document pointed out. “Some areas of the county have steep slopes, which are particularly vulnerable to wildfires, especially leeward slopes which do not receive moisture brought by trade winds.”

As for West Maui, the report painted a picture of a demographic particularly vulnerable to the ravages of wildfires.

It said West Maui had the highest rate of non-English speakers in the county — nearly 6 percent.

“This may limit the population’s ability to receive, understand and take expedient action during hazard events,” the plan states.

What’s more, the report said that West Maui had the county’s second-highest rate of households without a vehicle — almost 7 percent — and the highest density of multiunit housing in the county — almost 40 percent.

The report identified 50 strategies for the county to take to lessen the impact of natural hazards. For example, one of them called for the county to “establish an alternative route to and from West Maui for use during disasters.”

A stranger, a young man in his 20s, Ms. Francis said, rallied her and a small group of similarly stranded women, exhorting them to climb over the knee-high sea wall and take refuge on the strip of rocks along the water below.

They clambered onto the slippery rocks, Ms. Francis said. The fire roared through the cars and buildings along the street above, unleashing a choking wall of thick smoke. The oven-like heat pushed them farther down to the water’s edge, she said.

Facing the ocean, she clung tightly to a large boulder, afraid of being swept away by the crashing waves that were protecting her from an unrelenting shower of burning embers.

“A big wave would come and relieve us,” Ms. Francis, 54, a Hawaii native who has lived in Lahaina for 31 years, said during a phone interview on Friday. “So the waves really — the ocean — really took care of us.”

Still, the embers left her sleeveless arms with mosquito bite-size burns. Her eyes were seared by smoke and stung by salt water.

Hours passed, and the inferno continued to consume the town above.

Eventually, the fire dissipated. Ms. Francis and the others climbed back up the rocks and sat against the sea wall. A faint moon hovered over a dark sea. Lahaina’s burning harbor jutted into view.

It would be 1 a.m. before help arrived. Wedged into a truck barreling up Route 30 with other evacuees, Ms. Francis looked out on a charred landscape.

“Everything — scorched,” she said. “I felt like I was in a place I had never been before.”

Her neighborhood, just off the highway, had been leveled by the fire.

From a shelter at Maui Preparatory Academy, about 20 minutes north of Lahaina, she caught a ride to a friend’s house, where her family had gone to escape the fire. Her husband, John Francis, 66, was sleeping inside a car.

“I went by the car window and said ‘John, I’m here,’” Ms. Francis said. “He just broke down crying.”

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In 1960, a 9.5-magnitude quake — the most powerful earthquake ever recorded — rocked Chile. Hawaii had just become a state the year before and its warnings were hesitant at first, according to a book written by the museum’s co-founder, Walter Dudley, titled “Tsunami!”

“A violent earthquake has occurred in Chile. … It is possible that it has generated a large tsunami,” read a bulletin issued by the Honolulu Observatory on the morning of May 23, 1960.

An official tsunami warning was issued that evening, at 6:47 p.m. local time. Sirens sounded in the Hilo area a few hours later, at 8:35 p.m.

Many who had lived through the destruction of the 1946 tsunami evacuated immediately. But some Hilo residents, Ms. Preller said, were dubious about the sirens, thinking such a disaster could never strike again or that it was a false alarm, since other recent tsunami warnings had led to nothing. They stayed put.

The Hawaii County police department “didn’t fully understand or trust” the tsunami warning system, according to Dr. Dudley, and the police and the fire department did not coordinate their efforts.

That left the island in a state of confusion, which worsened with a broadcast from a Honolulu radio station. Scientists had already observed the first of the tsunami’s waves pass, but the radio report pushed back the tsunami’s arrival time, giving listeners the false sense that they had more time to react.

The first wave hit Hilo at 12:25 a.m. on May 24. By the fourth and final wave, much of the town had been destroyed; almost every building in some districts was wiped out. Along with the dead, hundreds of people were injured.

Ms. Preller noted that Hilo did not rebuild much in the areas hit by the tsunami, instead demonstrating what she called the “resiliency of the Hawaiian spirit” by resurrecting them as parks and lagoons, without structures.

“I came back, and there was no home,” she said.

The wildfires are now one of the worst natural disasters in modern Hawaiian history. At least 67 people had been confirmed dead as of Friday afternoon, and officials warned that the toll could rise.

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On Friday afternoon, officials allowed Ms. Salmonese and other residents to see what was left of the scorched neighborhoods in Lahaina, a former royal capital of Hawaii that held sacred memories for them. They began sifting through the charred remains of their lives, looking for possessions and mementos to salvage.

For Ms. Salmonese, it was the “unreal” discovery of her diamond earrings among the twisted wreck of her Peloton bike and other belongings. For her condo neighbors, Patricia Hedlund and Jeffrey Paul Hedlund, it was a container holding the ashes of the couple’s dog, Grimace, and his old dog tags.

Ms. Hedlund, who had rushed out of the house with her pet chameleon, had been kicking herself for leaving behind the last tangible reminder of their dog. She had raced to drive one family car out of the range of the flames, escaping in the second car without stopping to grab Grimace’s ashes or the $10,000 worth of gold coins in her home.

“I feel weird — it is a mix of feelings,” Ms. Hedlund said. “I feel mad, I feel angry, I feel sad.”

The white sprawl of the Lahaina Cannery Mall, built in 1987 on the site of a former pineapple cannery, was also still standing. The parking lots surrounding both sites appeared to have acted as fire breaks.

Also seemingly unscathed was the Maria Lanakila Catholic Church, a beige cathedral.

Much of Lahaina was an old whaling village built from wood, and in recent months the town’s landscape had been dry. Tim Perry, the pilot of the Blue Hawaiian helicopter who said he previously flew firefighting missions, pointed out how the wind had accelerated over the mountains, blowing embers from one building to the next, toward the ocean.

The speed of the blaze appeared to have frozen the town in time. Along Front Street, there was a line of cars — abandoned and burned.

The federal response will be closely watched as FEMA helps state and local officials with rescue and recovery missions to the devastating wildfires. The agency has been criticized in the past for its responses to major disasters, like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017. In many cases, the criticism centered around accusations that it was not adequately prepared or slow to respond. At least a few Maui residents have questioned why the agency was not already present after the fires.

The agency did not respond to multiple requests for comment on its current efforts in Maui on Friday.

But Peter Gaynor, a former FEMA administrator who served during the Trump administration, said the agency’s response at this point is where it should be, particularly because Hawaii is so far away from the continental United States. FEMA’s role, Mr. Gaynor said, is to support state and local responders, not to be the first on the scene.

“I can understand why people don’t see FEMA right away,” Mr. Gaynor said, “but that doesn’t mean that they’re not there.”

Responding to disasters in Hawaii and other United States territories in the Pacific has always been a challenge for the agency. A nonstop flight from Los Angeles to Hawaii takes about five hours. And sending supplies and equipment by ship takes days.

“Getting anything, even on a good day, to one of these places is a challenge,” Mr. Gaynor said.

According to a government watchdog report, FEMA focused on improving its preparations in the Pacific region in 2017, adding more supplies to its distribution centers in Hawaii and Guam.

When FEMA responded to a volcanic eruption and a hurricane in Hawaii in 2018, it ran into problems providing housing assistance because, in some cases, residences were in remote areas and did not have clear documentation about ownership, according to the report by the watchdog, the Government Accountability Office. But FEMA has since updated its policies.

Most recently, the agency has been criticized for inequitable distribution of disaster assistance funds, with white disaster victims often receiving more help than people of color facing similar damage.

Telecommunications were destroyed by the flames, making it difficult to convey the ferocity of the new fire. Mr. Green also described how helicopters were unable to spray water over the fire because of winds that reached as high as 80 miles per hour.

“That’s not, again, to make any excuse for anyone, and we’re going to check and be very safe and sure that we did what we could,” he said. “But I have to tell you, this was a very fluid situation across the island.”

He also pointedly noted the toll of climate change and the challenges of Hawaii’s distance from the mainland when it came to the devastation and recovery.

“We will do all that we can to find out how to protect our people more going forward,” Mr. Green said. “It’s just we’ve not seen populations like this in the last 30,40, 50 years ever threatened in an era of global warming. And that’s a concern.”

Federal officials have repeatedly pledged assistance to the state, with President Biden calling Mr. Green on Friday and Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, speaking with Lloyd J. Austin III, the secretary of defense.

“Of course, everybody wants Lahaina to rebuild, and, of course, we will work on that,” Mr. Schatz said. “But this tragedy is not over. The disaster response is not over. Fires are not out. The electricity is not back up. The fiber is not back up. And so, it’s important for us to operationally prepare for a recovery, but we are not in the recovery phase. We are in the middle of this disaster.”

But he said that it would take Congress approving an emergency aid package to appropriately support the state’s recovery.

“It’s a full rebuild,” Mr. Schatz said. “It’s an entire town that has roughly 12,000 people, and it’s been flattened. There’s not a single thing we won’t need.”

But it was only later in the day, when he began to smell smoke in his house, that Mr. Kaleiopu started to realize the urgency of the threat the town faced.

“We were just putting two and two together,” he said, adding that emergency text alerts from local officials arrived late because of interrupted cell service. “So I went and sat in my car, turned on the radio, tried to listen. The updates weren’t coming in as fast as things were changing. So we didn’t know that we needed to actually evacuate until the fire had spread to my neighbor’s front yard.”

Like many in the town, Mr. Kaleiopu grew up Lahaina, a place with a rich history as a former capital of the Hawaiian kingdom, where generations of families lived together and locals knew each other by name.

But Lahaina changed in recent years, he said. Longtime residents struggled to afford homes. Investors bought up properties. Mr. Kaleiopu, who is of Native Hawaiian heritage, described a complicated relationship with the growing tourism industry, which provided him and others with jobs but sometimes strained local resources.

“The infrastructure is not made to handle that many people, and that’s the frustration: We wish that there was just safer tourism, that the island wasn’t so crowded, especially in times of crisis,” Mr. Kaleiopu said.

When the fire reached his neighbor’s yard, Mr. Kaleiopu said he loaded his grandfather into a car and began preparing to leave. The two made sure to grab their identification, but had no time to pack bags. He said he only went back inside to try to find his cat.

“We’re flipping the furniture over because the smoke was so thick — there was no electricity, no light in the house,” he said. “After what felt like an hour, it’s probably three to five minutes — my grandpa said, ‘He’ll make his way out, we’ve got to go.’”

After a slow drive across traffic-clogged roads, Mr. Kaleiopu and his grandfather made it to safety. But they soon learned that their home, a place that had been in the family for decades, was gone.

Mr. Kaleiopu has spent recent days with family in another part of Maui, a comfort that others do not have. But with limited housing options on the island, he said he might temporarily relocate to Honolulu.

Still, Mr. Kaleiopu said, there was no question that he would return to Lahaina, that he would carve out a new life in a rebuilt town. He had to, he said. It is home.

Here is some guidance for those who wish to help.

First, do your research

When natural disasters arise, so do the opportunities for fraudsters who prey on people in need and exploit the generous impulses of others. Officials with the Federal Communications Commission have said that scammers may use phone calls, text messages, emails, post mail, and even go door to door. The Federal Trade Commission has tips on how to spot a fraudulent charity or fund-raiser.

“We are already seeing various fund-raising efforts being promoted on social media platforms and online,” Hawaii’s attorney general, Anne Lopez, said in a news release on Tuesday. “In moments of crisis, we all must be extra vigilant against bad actors who try to take advantage of people’s good will.”

State officials recommend that donations should be made to well-known organizations, stressing the importance of verifying that your chosen charity is legitimate. Officials in Hawaii have said that any charity that solicits donations in the state must be registered with the Department of the Attorney General. The status of a charity can be verified here on Hawaii’s official website.

Charity Navigator and GuideStar are two organizations that provide information on nonprofit groups and aid agencies. These organizations can also direct you to reputable ones.

How you can help

The Hawaii Community Foundation is asking for monetary donations. This fund is used to support communities affected by the wildfires.

Maui United Way is also asking for money. The organization promises to provide immediate financial assistance through grants to nonprofits at the forefront of relief efforts and to households that have been affected.

The American Red Cross is also providing disaster relief for those forced to flee their homes.

The Maui Food Bank is accepting monetary donations, as well as certain foods, toiletries and household items.

Helping animals

Most of the rescue and relief efforts are aimed at helping humans but animals are also often in need during natural disasters.

The Maui Humane Society said on Thursday that its shelters were already over capacity before the fires and urged people foster a dog. The organization said it was also looking for donations of pet food, pop-up kennels and litter. In a statement on Facebook, the group said that donations of supplies could be dropped off directly at the Maui Humane Society location on the island, or delivered through its Amazon wishlist. People can also offer help in the Maui Fires Pets Help Group, which will enable pet owners to connect with others without straining the society’s resources.