It was a normal Tuesday afternoon. Sierra Shaw celebrated her friend’s 21st birthday. She met up with her fiancé. She spent time with family.
August 8 was lining up to be another mundane day. But the power had been out all day. Shaw didn’t know when it was going to be fixed. The winds seemed to be picking up.
Could this have just been winds from hurricane Dora headed toward California’s coast? Surely the 500 miles that separated the eye of the storm and the coastal town of Lahaina, Maui, would be enough. Surely that storm wouldn’t affect Shaw’s mundane Tuesday.
She met her fiancé at a restaurant on Front Street that evening for dinner. They waited for hours before finally giving up and heading home. They met Shaw’s mother in their living room. Her mom had set up Scrabble for the three of them to play. It was just another mundane Tuesday.
After a few words had been played, Sierra noticed the winds outside her living room window. The grass from her sister’s lawn was peeling up from the dirt. The mango tree fell down. Maybe 500 miles wasn’t enough separation between Lahaina and Dora, Shaw thought.
Shaw, her fiancé and her mom went out to the front porch to check out the damages. Shaw soon realized that 500 miles wasn’t enough separation. A fire raged 1.6 miles away from her childhood home. Black smoke covered the blue sky. Orange flames began to jump from the pastures to the restaurants to the schools and to the neighborhoods.
They would need to evacuate Lahaina soon. Shaw grabbed two days’ worth of clothes, a book, her laptop and her dog Daisy.
“We left with the intention to come back in the morning,” Shaw said.
In six hours, Shaw’s home would be burnt to the ground. The restaurant she worked it would be leveled. Her fiancé’s home would go up in smoke.
“There was no text message. No sirens. No cops,” Shaw said.
The only reason Shaw and her family evacuated was because they got up from their mundane Tuesday Scrabble game and looked out to a fire engulfing the town 1.6 miles away. She had no warning that her livelihood would be caught up in flames that day.
Two months earlier, Shaw had made a life-altering decision. After three semesters at the University of Idaho, Shaw decided to stay home. She had been studying exercise science in Moscow with the aspirations of opening her own physical therapy clinic one day.
But the four-hour time difference, two-thousand mile separation and ice cold Idaho winters became a burden she no longer wanted to carry. Shaw moved home to Lahaina and reconnected with her family, her friends and her culture.
She had no idea that she would only have a few months back at home before disaster struck, before she would have to start her life over.
“We had no power or cell service for three or four days,” Shaw said.
Shaw said that the local community stepped up and supported the Lahaina survivors. Local people and local businesses banded together and created emergency hubs that provided items such as clothes, food and water, basic necessities Shaw now needed.
Without cell service, people didn’t know who evacuated in time. Shaw said the hubs become a place of reunion.
“You would be on the phone, with barely any service like ‘Hello. Can you hear me? I’m alive,’” Shaw said. “You would see people and just hug them so tight. It was just confirmation that you weren’t dead.”
The death toll sits at 115, according to a Tuesday AP article, with hundreds more still missing. Shaw said the search has moved from the land to the sea.
She recalled a story of a friend fighting the fire on the front lines.
“He was piggybacking grandmas from Front Street and putting them in the ocean,” Shaw said.
She said many people fled the fire and jumped into the ocean, but litter in the water would ignite. People would have to swim farther and farther into the water to escape, with many staying in the water until 2 a.m. the next morning.
“We didn’t see help from the federal government,” Shaw said. “It was just the people taking care of the people. Maui leaned on itself.”
Main roads into Lahaina were blocked off. However, Shaw took a backroad Wednesday morning to see the damages. She walked up to her home only to find it as a pile of rubble. She saw metal chairs still standing in what had been the dining room. She saw the resemblance of her sister’s Peloton bike in the corner.
One item survived, a three-dollar giraffe flower pot from Target. Her clothes were gone. Her bed was gone. Her memories were gone.
“Lahaina will never be the same,” Shaw said. “But we’re going to survive. We’re going to rebuild.”
When Shaw decided to leave Moscow after the spring semester, her friend Ku’ulei Ka’aukai stayed at the school.
“It’s hard enough being away from home and from Sierra, but knowing people there are hurting, my culture is hurting, and I’m not there with them, makes it even harder,” Ka’aukai said.
Ka’aukai said there were many factors that contributed to the fire. 75% of West Maui’s water supply is owned by private entities. Only 25% is controlled by the county, Ka’aukai said. This years-long diversion of water away from Lahaina turned a wetland dry.
“In Hawai’i, each town is a different ecosystem,” Ka’aukai, a big island native, said. “Lahaina is different from Hana which is different from Kula.”
Ka’aukai said Lahaina needed federal help following the fires. She said that local people became that help.
“Actions speak louder than words, and their (the government’s) actions have said jack s***,” Ka’aukai said.
Shaw said that local people have provided as much as they can and that Lahaina needs mainland support. The emergency hubs have provided plenty of necessities, but financial assistance is still welcomed, Shaw said.
She said the best way to help Lahaina families is to donate directly to Lahaina families. Organizations such as Red Cross will leave Lahaina soon to help Florida after hurricane Idalia, Shaw said.
Shaw recommended donating to @lahaina_ohana_venmo on Instagram, a verified account that is run by families in Lahaina.
“We’re just trying to keep Lahaina, Lahaina,” Shaw said.