Restoring Maui’s land and community

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, August 15th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

BROWN: Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Recovering from the Maui wildfires.

Last week marked one year since wildfires burned more than 2,000 acres on an island in the Hawaiian archipelago. The fires killed more than 100 people and displaced 12,000 more. Authorities say downed power lines likely started the fire. Several companies, the state of Hawaii, and the County of Maui recently settled a four billion dollar lawsuit… over how they allegedly failed to prepare and maintain equipment.

MAST: Since then, Hawaiians have been trying to clear debris and rebuild their homes, but it’s slow going for many and very few have been able to move back to the burned zone.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy talked to one of those Hawaiians and brings us our story.

EDDY GARCIA: Starting out early, the winds were just unbelievable, like nothing we'd ever seen.

MARY MUNCY: Eddy Garcia runs a regenerative farming non-profit on Maui—teaching people how to homestead and revitalizing abandoned land. He also raises some livestock. Garcia and his interns were trying to repair some fence lines on one of his properties when the hurricane hit and trees and telephone poles started going down. Then they saw the fires.

GARCIA: I don't think we realized how bad it was. We went to the top of the hill to get a better view of it. And in that time we went to the top of the hill, we could see that it was beyond serious.

High winds were moving the fire toward Lahaina, a nearby city of about 13,000 people.

GARCIA: Even though the flames weren't completely engulfing Lahaina, all of Lahaina, yet, the smoke and the wind had turned everything black and inundated everything. Where you couldn't see, you couldn't breathe.

They went down to the road to help move debris with their machines until the police told them to go home.

Garcia’s land was well managed, but he still kept fighting fires until the next day. Then Garcia took a couple of interns into Lahaina to see if they could help anyone left there move debris or get out.

GARCIA: There was nobody really there we could help. It was just carnage, like a nuclear bomb went off. All that was there was vultures, which were the looters.

So they went back to the farm, just a few miles from Lahaina. The next day, both of his interns quit because of the trauma.

But Garcia stayed on his farm and started looking for ways to help in the long term.

In the first few months, he helped distribute food and let charities use his farm as a distribution hub.

Then he realized he had some unique business connections.

GARCIA: I was like, let me reach out to shipping companies and people that I know, and solar companies, and perhaps they can help us.

And they did. Companies donated about 100 shipping containers along with solar panels and other goods. So far, Garcia has distributed the supplies to build about 40 tiny homesteads. These are self-sufficient, so people don’t have to wait to live on their land until the city turns power and water back on.

On one trip to drop off a container, he saw an “auntie” he hadn’t seen in years.

GARCIA: They actually used to scold me for taking mangoes off the fence.

He started talking to her.

GARCIA: ‘Well, you know, I just gave your brother a container over there.’ And, ‘oh, we not gonna ask for anything. Well, my family all shame.’ There's this thing in Hawaii where others need it more than you. You don’t ask.

The fire burned her generational land. Eight families were living there and it would likely take years to rebuild.

He asked her to come get a container from him, but she said she wouldn’t.

GARCIA: I'm like, ‘nah, nah, nah, Auntie, I need you. I need you to come get a container from me. I need to take care of you guys, and you need to tell your neighbors, it's alright, no shame, cause sometimes we need help.’

She eventually let him help.

Garcia says just getting back onto your land is its own kind of healing.

GARCIA: A lot of these people, what was interrupted in this culture is uncle was always raking leaves. Auntie was outside watering plants. So living in hotels for months at a time, not being able to cook your own food, not being able to do the mundane things you used to do, is pretty traumatizing.

He’s still dealing with his own trauma.

He wasn’t able to get back on some of his land immediately because the address wasn’t right on Apple Maps and FEMA wouldn’t accept Google Maps. Since they weren’t sure it was his, he couldn’t move anything and he watched looters carry away a lot of his livelihood.

Garcia also says some of the initial charities weren’t legitimate—and now he and others say bureaucratic red tape is keeping people off their land and from rebuilding.

GARCIA: I want to say, we cry in my office three times a week.

But things are slowly returning to normal, and soon he’ll start working to get the toxins from melted PVC pipe and other burned things out of his land.

GARCIA: By the end of next year, we will phase out of our recovery program and be back to what we do. We're farmers.

Garcia says the fire was devastating, but through it, he’s watched his community come together in ways he thinks might not have happened otherwise.

GARCIA: My greatest accomplishment recently has been to break through that shame, that shame of accepting by connecting with my neighbors and people I’ve known my whole life or known of, but we were fragmented in our community and didn’t have that bond. Now we’re friends for life.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

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