By the Inside Outreach team · August 10, 2023On August 8, Lahaina burned. If you live in Hawaiʻi you know exactly where you were when you saw it. The videos. The harbor. The people running into the ocean to get away from the smoke.
And then that feeling. What do I do?
Most of us can’t get on a plane and fight a fire. But we can do something. So two days later we put the word out. Bring donations to 41-902 OluOlu St. in Waimānalo, Aunty Blanche’s farm at Hui Mahiʻai ʻĀina. Non-perishable food. Toiletries. Medical supplies. Whatever you’ve got.
You came. Oʻahu ʻohana dropped off around $2,200 in supplies in the first days alone. Cars lined up. Families brought their kids. People who don’t have a lot gave what they had anyway.
Listen first
Here’s something we learned a long time ago. When a disaster hits, the worst thing you can do is show up with your own plan and start telling locals what they need.
So Daniel flew over to listen before doing anything else. He met the local men who ran supplies in by boat on day one, while the roads were blocked. They were spending their own money to take care of their neighbors. Nobody asked them to. Nobody was paying them.
“I came to just listen, to cry with those who are mourning, and help where there is need.”
Daniel Molina
Those guys became the West Maui Community Alliance, and we got behind them. We helped them build a website in about eight hours so survivors had one trusted place to ask for help and to give it.
Air for the kūpuna
One need kept coming up. Kūpuna who stayed in homes near the burn zone were breathing that air every day. So we asked for air purifiers. You sent them, by hand and by Amazon, and we put them on the boat to Lahaina. Hawaii News Now covered it.
Then the receipts started piling up. $3,000 in tools from Lowe’s. $2,000 in food from Costco. All of it went to people with boots on the ground in West Maui.
This is going to be long
We said it then and we’ll say it now. The news will move on. The rebuild won’t. Families lost everything, and a lot of them were renters with nowhere to go back to.
By the numbers
102 people died in the Lahaina fire. That’s the number that should stop all of us. Behind it are thousands of families who lost homes, jobs, businesses and the town their grandparents grew up in.
And remember, before the fire, a lot of Maui families were already stretched thin. Working families who still can’t cover rent, food, childcare and gas in the same month. When people are already one paycheck away, a disaster doesn’t just knock them down. It keeps them down.
How you can help right now
Drop off non-perishables, toiletries and medical supplies in Waimānalo. Send an air purifier. Pray for the people on the ground, because this is an emotional roller coaster for them. And if you can, give money. Money lets the locals buy exactly what they need instead of sorting through a mountain of stuff they don’t.
If you want to help, the best thing you can do is keep giving after the cameras leave. We’ll keep going back.
Mahalo to everyone who dropped something off. You showed what aloha looks like when it costs you something.
