 Hawaii's human-humane architecture. I am this program's co-host. I'm DeSoto Brown. I am the Bishop Museum historian and the curator for the Archives Department at Bishop Museum here in Honolulu. And as everyone knows, on the day of August 8th and continuing to August 9th of 2023, the town of Lahainat Maui was tragically destroyed by a fire. At least 97 people were killed in this tragedy. And let's go to our first slide to introduce us to this program today. I was able to visit the town of Lahainat about five weeks after the fire, and I was able to take the photographs that I'm going to be showing you today of what I was able to see there and document. And while I'd be talking about the situation in Lahainat today as I was able to see it, I'm also going to be thinking about talking about some of the things that we can look for in the future to what Lahainat is going to turn into and how it's going to be rebuilt. This photograph shows you the sign, which stands next to the edge of the Honolulu Peelani Highway on the Kana Pali side of the town of Lahainat, welcoming you to what was the historic and very economically important town of Lahainat. So now let's go to our next slide. When you go to Maui today after the fire, you do not see in most of your encounters on the island, just as a visitor as I was, you don't see a great deal of evidence of the fire because while there was more than one fire on Maui, the one in Lahainat was obviously the worst one, and if you're not there, you don't see a lot of evidence of it. But there is a very big economic impact to the island, which is something I'll be talking about as well. You do, however, see evidence of the disaster that occurred there. And one of the reasons you see that, of course, is that there are emergency services still in place in a number of places. This photograph was taken in Koglui Maui to show you where some of these emergency offices were located, and thousands of people obviously were affected by the fire, not only in Lahainat but elsewhere too. So the need for emergency services from the government is very strong. There was a lot of discussion at the beginning of this disaster back in August of, was the adequate, was the response from the government adequate, not only the federal government but the county and the state, and a lot of private people had to step in, private citizens had to step in for emergency services right after the disaster had occurred. Next slide. Now, when you go to Lahainat today, a lot of it is still closed off, and there are very good reasons for it to be closed off. But when you get there, you'll see a lot of signs like the ones that you see here that designate where the closures are taking place. So there's a lot that you don't get to see. So when I was there taking photographs, obviously a great deal of Lahainat was closed off to me, and I was only able to see portions of it to get a sense of what the overall situation there was. And as I said, not only are these closure signs there, but there are National Guard personnel who are at particular checkpoints that prevent people from going into a variety of locations. And the streets are closed off. And there's also fencing up, like construction fencing that you can see in the background of the lower right photograph that shuts off the view of the disaster areas. And there's also there to prevent dust from blowing around. And that's something that's important as well. And here in our next slide, this is what I'm talking about. This is why areas of Lahainat are still closed off. And it's because in the burned area, there are a lot of dangerous elements. Now, first of all, right after the fire happened, emergency personnel had to fan out through the ruins to search for human remains. Because as I said, 97 identified victims are now known, people who have who are known to have been killed in the fire. And initially, the emergency workers were looking for people. And this photograph shows what is probably an abandoned car in a burned out neighborhood. But you'll notice that there are two spray painted X's on the windows of this car that shows that even though it wasn't burned, and even though it probably wasn't even operable at the time of the fire, it was checked by emergency personnel to be sure that there was no human body or bodies contained in it. Well, they had to do that all throughout the ruins, all throughout Lahainat, the destroyed part of Lahainat, which is a lot of it. And not only did they have to check for people, but there are a lot of dangerous parts of the ruins. There are things that can cut you, there are things that can hurt you, poke into you, that you can step on, hurt yourself. But there's also contamination from a variety of substances which burned things like batteries, lithium batteries, not to mention plastics and other things. So this is why most of Lahainat is still closed off. They are beginning to open Lahainat up for selected people to go to their property to check on their property for possessions. But even so, people are being warned, don't sift through the dust and raise the dust, which could be harmful for you to breathe. Next photo. Now, even outside of the burned area, there is a strong economic impact from the Lahainat fire. And this photograph shows the Whalers Village Marketplace Shopping Center, which is located in the Kaanapali Resort District. And as you can see, as of five weeks after the fire, even though this was not burned, this is miles away from the burned area, there are no people visible, there are no shoppers, and nobody going here to eat or drink either. And that is because the Kaanapali area, which contains a number of hotels and condos and has many rooms available, is mostly now still in use by fire refugees who are being housed there, as well as emergency personnel from the government, as well as private aid organizations. So there are any visitors there. They're not, the hotels are not accepting people from outside. So that means that the stores and the businesses that depend upon those visitors are not getting any customers. And in the next photograph, you can see here's a sign on the door of the upscale Louis Vuitton store saying that they are currently closed. So there's no point in opening if there are no customers. And so most of those businesses are shut down. That means that all of these people who depend on these businesses, the workers as well as the owners, are not getting any income right now. And that's what's very important economically for the island of Maui. Next photo. Another shopping center, which is located in the town of Lahaina itself, is this one. This is the Canary Mall. This is the only enclosed indoor shopping mall on the island of Maui. And even though the area all around it was burned, it did manage to survive intact. That is to say, without being burned. However, even though by the time I visited five weeks after the fire, the two major anchor tenants were open. That is the Safeway supermarket in a long stroke store. The rest of the businesses were still closed and had been closed for more than a month at that point. Now, even though the building was not damaged, there still are problems that they are dealing with there. And in this next photograph, you can see what I'm talking about. First of all, there's still no electricity and there's still no water service. So that means that most of the businesses cannot open. Furthermore, because there's no electricity, there's no air conditioning. And that means that they had to install all these emergency generators slash air conditioning machines inside and outside the enclosed part of the mall. And these all belong to a company called Belfer. Belfer is a disaster mitigation company, which is a national American company. And they come to situations like this to deal with disasters to help out in a variety of ways, including cleanup. But here in the mall, even though it wasn't burned, I'm sure that it was entirely inundated by smoke for hours. And that means a lot of the merchandise inside the mall is going to have received smoke damage. It's going to smell bad, at the very least, which means that customers are probably not going to want to buy clothes that smell that strongly of smoke. So these are the many things that have impacted people even in buildings that were not destroyed or damaged by fire. Next slide. So why did this disaster happen? There were a number of things that all came together at the same time in a very unfortunate way to cause the disaster. And the first one was high winds. Those high winds affected all of the Hawaiian islands, not just Maui and not just Lahina. And in this photograph, you can see wind damage that was still in place five weeks after the fire. This is a plastic fence, which was blown down by the winds, which in Lahina were at least 60 miles or more per hour. And that's enough to cause significant damage. This all occurred because of a weather pattern, which was high pressure to the north of the islands and low pressure far to the south of the islands from a hurricane, which was passing by. That hurricane did not directly affect us. The winds of the hurricane were too far away. But the wind, the air wants to go from high pressure to low pressure in an overall weather pattern. And Lahina is particularly susceptible to very high winds being generated or made even stronger by the process of flowing over the mountains, the West Maui mountains that you see in the background, and going down the slope. And that's what happened here. So on that day of August 8th, very high winds were blowing again, as I said, over 60 miles an hour. And in this next slide, we see again, another evidence of what that caused. And this is an uprooted monkey pod tree that obviously has been cut down by the time I was able to take this photograph, but it's been pulled out of the ground by the roots. Well, not only were trees blown down, but branches were broken off. And that could cause a number of problems. There was structural damage to buildings as well. But even more importantly, when we go to the next slide, what the real damage and the real important damage was to the utility poles, the wooden utility poles that carried the live electric lines. Those poles were tipped over. Some of them were broken off. They were knocked to the ground and live electrical wires made contact with the ground. Now, there is still, at this point, no official statement as to exactly how the fire started, where, when, et cetera. But we do know that in the early morning, after about 6.30 in the morning, live electrical wires were blown down on the hillside above Lahaina. They made contact with dry grass. The fire that that began was fought by firefighters for several hours. They left after it was contained, meaning it was not spreading any further, but it was not entirely put out. And about three o'clock in the afternoon, with those high winds, the fire was revived and began to spread again. Next photo. So this is a picture. This is an aerial picture of Lahaina in the 1950s. And I need to tell you that the town has grown considerably since this photograph was taken. There's a great deal more to Lahaina than there is in this picture. But the important part of this picture is the hillside above Lahaina is cultivated with sugarcane. So it's green. That green growing sugarcane was not very liable to burn. And even though sugarcane was intentionally burned before it was harvested, it was kept under control by members of by employees of the Pioneer Mill Company. And not only that, but there are firebreaks throughout all of these sugarcane fields. There are roads and firebreaks that meant that the fires could be contained. Well, the Pioneer Mill is long since shut down. There is no more sugarcane cultivation. And that means that the dry grass and scrub that took over the former sugarcane fields is now very liable to being burned without any control. So let's look at this in the next slide. And we very clearly see right here in this picture a division between burned grass on the left and I mean unburned grass on the left, excuse me, and burned grass on the right. What's happened is that a number of invasive plant species have now taken over this formerly cultivated land. And during the winter, when it rains, the grass and the scrub will become green and grow. And in the summer, when there is no rain, it dies back or dies off completely. And then it's liable to burn. So right here in front of us in this picture is the exact situation that occurred on the hillside above Lahaina, which then led to the catastrophic fire. In the next photograph, we also see that unfortunately, there are other invasive plants in this area that contribute to the fire damage. And because these are invasive, very tough plants, they don't get killed by fires. They will continue to grow. So in the picture on the left, you see Howley coa. This is a very common shrub throughout the Hawaiian Islands in dry areas. It's woody. And even if it burns, the roots stay alive and it will re-sprout. Now, on one hand, that's good because it prevents a lot more destruction happening from wind and water erosion. But at the same time, it also contributes to fires. So here's a burned Howley coa bush sprouting again very luxuriously from its roots. And on the right, something called wild tobacco, which again, right here in this very difficult setting next to the ocean, burned by the fire, but not killed. And it'll regrow and it will contribute to fires in the future as they occur, unfortunately. Next slide. Well, staying with vegetation and trees, etc., one of the things you can clearly see in Lahaina is the division between what burned and what didn't by what trees have died and what's dead and what's still green and alive. So in this picture, you see the very arbitrary nature of the fire, how some structures and some things burn and right next to them, other things survive. Well, these mango trees really clearly show that the one on the right is possibly completely dead, although it does appear to have some greenery in it. But on the left or right in the center of the picture, you see a burned tree, mango tree that the right side is completely alive. And it is these green leaves, which I have to say, give you a sense of hope and regeneration as you look over this burned landscape, which is so tragic. And in the next photograph, here are, again, evidence of trees that fortunately have survived. In the picture on the left, there are coconut palms growing next to the Iolani Highway, which very clearly are burned. The tree leaves hanging at the base of the crowns are dead from the fire. But there are green leaves in the center of the crowns. This was an exceptional situation because just Malca of these trees is a building that did not burn in a park. The open space of a park in the midst of suburban houses meant that the fire was not as intense. And these trees survived as well as across the highway on the Makai side in the picture on the right, there is a living mango tree that, again, was not killed because the fire was not able to burn so intensively in this area. Next photo. The tree that has gotten the most attention in Lahaina very abruptly so is the ancient banyan tree right in the center of town. It is this year celebrating its 150th year of being planted in this location. It was planted in 1873. The photograph on the screen right now is 50 years old. So the tree at this point in the photograph was about 100. It's now 150 so it's even bigger than it was in this photograph. But although the tree was badly scorched and although it looked dead, fortunately, it's such a large organism and fortunately, again, there was open space around most of it where buildings were not directly up next to it that burned, that it survived even though it looked like it was dead. And it has now as of the six weeks after the fire, about five weeks after the fire began to show signs of light. So the tree has survived and even though this doesn't bring back everything that was destroyed and those who died, it is an important thing for everybody in Lahaina to look at regrowth and regeneration and see the banyan tree is still with us. Next slide. There's going to have to be a lot of infrastructure development, redevelopment, and replacement in the burned town of Lahaina. And this highway sign very clearly shows what I mean. This, the state government, the county government, probably even the federal government are going to have to put in a lot of money to bring things back to where Lahaina is inhabitable again. And this sign originally read, Lahaina Bypass, double left at Kave Street. And as you can tell, I just read it to you, but it's not easy to tell because all those letters are gone. Well, this is just one thing the government is going to have to replace. But probably even more so in this next slide, probably even more important is the infrastructure of electric wiring because we saw that electric wires on utility poles are dangerous. We saw that that is most likely how the fire started again, even though there's no official statement as to what happened. That means that if we're going to do this right and if Lahaina is going to be made safe, all of that wiring should go underground. Well, the wires that you see lying here on the ground next in this photograph next to the street, obviously we're on poles. They're going to have to be reinstalled on poles before there can be any massive rebuilding and to put them underground where they should be for maximum safety. Next photo. So when you look at Lahaina, a lot of thought has been given to and a lot of people have been thinking about the economic impact of losing all of the businesses in Lahaina, which were mainly patronized by tourists. And Lahaina was a very important part of Bionwes economy, and it has to come back in order for that economy to do well. But the main part of what burned in Lahaina were thousands of private homes. And that's what you see in this picture here. The private homes, the loss of these homes of 2,200 buildings were demolished, were destroyed in Lahaina, most of them homes. The people who are going to move back into new homes have to have jobs. And a lot of them worked in Lahaina. So the redevelopment of Lahaina, residentially as well as commercially, has to go hand in hand in order for it to come back as a viable place to live. But the redevelopment of Lahaina and the rebuilding of all these homes, it has to be kept in consideration. How are they going to be kept not as flammable? How are we going to avoid this by not having things burned again? Well, probably restrictions are going to have to be made as to what people can use to rebuild homes. Now, I said earlier, and now we'll go to the next slide, that you, when you look at Lahaina now, you can see, again, the arbitrary chaotic nature of the fire. One thing will have burned completely and something right next to it will have survived. And this is true in every large fire. And a lot of conspiracy theorists have been put out of a lot of ridiculous statements about intentional fire. No, it's not that. Fires that are very large and fires that are driven by very high winds are always out of control and chaotic. The house that you see in this photograph is located in the midst of a neighborhood that was completely destroyed by fire and yet it survived. Well, one of the reasons it survived is because it is cement block. Walls are cement block. That's not flammable. So a lot of embers, a lot of burning things could be blown up against the wall and the wall will not catch on fire. But obviously the roof is made of combustible flammable materials. It's a wooden structure with flammable material on top of that. It forms the roof. And here in our final and last slide, we can see that even walls that were made of cement cinder block did not keep residences from burning because those residences have wooden roofs, they have wooden doors, they have wooden window frames, the partitions inside are made of wood. And furthermore, we fill our houses with combustible things like wooden furniture and fabrics that will burn and paper that will burn and plastic that will burn. So once this intense fire gets to a house, even if it has cement brick walls, a lot of that fire is going to get inside and it's going to cause the total destruction that we see in Lahaina. And again, the devastation in Lahaina is really mind boggling because once that fire got started, it was impossible to put out and it burned for hours. It burned all night until everything flammable was entirely consumed and that's why this was such a tragedy. So that brings us to the end of part one of this two-part presentation about the town of Lahaina as it now appears in the month of September 2023, six weeks after it was destroyed by fire. So I'll be back with my part two show the next time I'm here on FATEC and that brings us, as I said, to the end of this episode of Human-Humane Architecture. Thank you all for joining me. I hope you will be joining me again for my part two to continue our discussion of Lahaina and until then, until next time, Aloha, everyone.