Lahaina looks forward: From middle schoolers to the mayor, what locals see for the historic town’s future

Maui Mayor Richard Bissen spent much of his childhood across the street from the town’s famous banyan tree at the hotel where his mother worked. Now, he helms the recovery effort in Lahaina from his office in Wailuku.

His deep roots make it hard for him to imagine Lahaina looking different, but there are some key things he’s prioritizing, including restoring reliable child care and housing.

Right now, the focus is on the community’s most immediate needs, including removing debris, getting people access to their homes again, and restoring utilities and public facilities.

He recognizes the pain of local families and wants to incentivize them to stay in Lahaina. Providing affordable housing, including potentially using funds from philanthropic donations, might be one path. He also wants people to go back to work at the right time for them.

“To really accommodate people, you cannot require them to go back if they’re not ready,” he said. “I think that’s an individual and a personal decision that families make. … Some people lost their homes, they lost loved ones, they lost everything.”

As far as the look and feel of downtown, he pictures it having wider streets, with more foot traffic from local pedestrians.

“It’s hard not to keep picturing Old Lahaina,” he said. “It’s such a beautiful town.”

Minister of Lahaina’s oldest church: Focus rebuilding on the chapel and gathering hall

As the minister of Lahaina’s oldest church, Anela Rosa, 64, says she would see the beauty of the town come to life on Sundays.

“I see people on bikes riding, I see people walking, I see people eating shaved ice,” she said. “I see people playing the ukulele as you’re walking down the road. … I see happy people.”

Waiola Church, which had just celebrated its 200th birthday before fires consumed its three buildings, was the final resting place for some members of the Hawaiian royal family. It was where Rosa conducted Sunday service, weddings, funerals and celebrations. More than that, it was a gathering place for people of all ages.

To keep in touch with her congregation, she has since been offering sermons on Facebook.

She knows Waiola will be rebuilt, she said. But as locals focus on their immediate needs, the planning seems far off. She doesn’t know how it might look, but she knows she wants to bring back at least two buildings: a chapel and a community gathering space.

“There’s not even a doubt that we’re going to rebuild the church,” she said. “I think it’s important that, in addition to our church sanctuary, that we also have a social hall. For gatherings, for community meetings, for birthday parties, for celebrations, weddings. It did play a big role.”

A principal and school leader: Keeping the next generation local

As the heads of a West Maui school now filled with students and faculty who lost everything, Miguel Solis and Ryan Kirkham want to see a Lahaina built for their kids to thrive. They hope young people’s needs are placed at the center of reconstructing the Lahaina they’ll grow up in, including spaces for them to use technology, innovate and start new enterprises without having to leave the area.

“There’s a real movement to not re-create it, but modernize it and rebuild it in a way that still honors its history,” said Kirkham, who is the principal of Maui Preparatory Academy.

Solis, the head of school, imagines a thriving economy with ample work and affordable housing that keeps locals, especially Native Hawaiian families, in Lahaina.

“These are the people that carry with them the language, the history and the storytelling. … This is their homeland,” he said. “I don’t want them to leave. I want them to stay here. But that’s going to be so difficult if they don’t have homes, if they don’t have jobs.”

With classrooms set up for the first day of school, the small K-12 building took in around 700 survivors the night of the fire. Families were bused in by the dozen, some soaking wet or covered in ash. Over the next few days, Kirkham and Solis distributed donated supplies to thousands.

As the smoke cleared, it was revealed that King Kamehameha III Elementary in Lahaina had completely burned down. Lāhaināluna High, Lāhainā Intermediate and Princess Nāhi‘ena‘ena Elementary survived the flames, but could not open due to the air and water quality.

When Maui Prep finally welcomed kids back two weeks later, its student body had grown from 275 to 390. Displaced children from all over Lahaina joined its ranks. It’s been a challenge, Kirkham said, as everyone contends with loss. Their focus now is on providing a space where the students can begin to thrive again.

“We didn’t hit the books hard right away. We were just trying to give some sense of normalcy to our returning students, and then introduce the new students,” Kirkham said. “In some ways, I feel as though we’re just barely past the, ‘OK, do we have a roof over our heads? Are we safe for the next couple of months.’”

A middle schooler: Worried about having a future ‘road to escape when there’s a fire again’

Francheska Vhiel Balete Misay, 12, has been displaced, bouncing around temporary housing in hotels since August. The fires have affected her so much that the main thing on her mind is safety — in case there’s a next time.

That’s why the seventh grader, who grew up in Lahaina, said she’s hoping that her hometown will be rebuilt with safety as a priority.

“I want it to be the old Lahaina again but more safe,” she told NBC News. “The fire has been a lesson for us. … We would have more roads to escape when there’s a fire again, the community stronger, and we can build it together.”

She also envisions more robust safety measures at school, including more evacuation drills and a higher level of training for students and staff to contend with fires and other climate disasters.

Francheska said she was visiting relatives in the Philippines when the fires broke out. Since her family returned to Hawaii, they’ve been floating the idea of moving to another state. The possibility of leaving her hometown, she said, is devastating.

“The last time we were in my house was the day we left to the airport,” she said. “Whatever we packed in our suitcases is what we have left.”

The fires have undoubtedly shaped her, she said. While she has always dreamed of becoming a doctor or lawyer, she said she’s more motivated now than ever, hoping she can help her community in the future.

A Filipino immigrant whose family of 50 was displaced: Hope for more multigenerational housing

Camille Serrano, 51, said healing has been difficult since the fires left the more than 50 members of her immediate and extended Filipino American family separated and away from their usual home base.

“I’m just trying to survive one day at a time, just going through the motions,” she said. 

Serrano, a longtime Lahaina resident who came to the U.S. from the Philippines in 1999, says she hopes the area can be rebuilt with more permanent, multigenerational housing available for Filipino families like hers so they are able to maintain their communal lifestyles. She explained that spending time with loved ones and relatives is a critical part of both joy and grieving in the Filipino community.

“We want our next generations to be as close and family-oriented as we are,” she said.

Serrano, who lived with her mother and children only a 5-10-minute drive from several of her siblings, said she longs to revive their family rituals.

“We used to have a Sunday brunch, just to have a family get-together, cook out. If it’s not at the beach, it would be at my mom’s house, which is my house,” she said. “After mass we just do that, and all the grandkids would come and they love doing karaoke like a typical Filipino.”

The scattering of her loved ones across the island, in addition to the housing uncertainty they all currently face, has taken a toll, she said.

“We are very close,” she said through tears. “I’m a very, very simple person. I would just like to see how it was before.”

Preservationists restoring Hawaiian Kingdom-era structures: Hopeful about rebuilding on top of former king’s lava rock and coral foundations 

Throughout Lahaina, there are vestiges of King Kamehameha III’s openness to a diversity of architecture. The oldest house on the island of Maui, the Baldwin House, for example, wasn’t only made of wood. Its walls incorporated stone, crafted from coral and lava rock. Some of these structures from the Hawaiian Kingdom, which lasted from 1795 until 1893, can be restored due to the king’s architectural vision.

Kimberly Flook, deputy executive director of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation, a nonprofit aimed at preserving and protecting Lahaina’s history and cultural heritage, said she’s hoping that many of the important historical structures are salvaged.

“Some of the buildings from every era, their bones are still there. And that means they can be restored,” Flook said. “That doesn’t mean that we didn’t lose probably five- to seven-hundred other buildings that were wooden that did not have stone elements, but it does mean that pretty much every [historical era represented] throughout town, we have the ability to continue to interpret these time periods.”

Among the historic structures that still stand are the Lahaina Customs and Courthouse, which once served as the center of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and the Masters Reading Room, a sort of gentlemen’s club retreat used during the Missionary Era.

Restoring the structures will likely call for a large investment of time and money, Flook said, requiring the help of architects, engineers and construction groups that specialize in historic restoration projects. She added that the structures will likely be rebuilt with the same materials that were historically used, aside from areas that could be improved to account for climate change. That means the majority of the buildings will still have old materials including coral and lava rock, lime mortar, shingled roofs and wooden floors and staircases, in addition to newer materials approved for restoration.

But Flook said she’s ultimately prepared to support what Native Hawaiian leaders deem to be the best way to preserve the Hawaiian story.

“It’s important to really bring what we call the ‘host culture,’ the Hawaiian culture to the forefront. Now more than ever,” she said.

A business owner: Returning to a mom-and-pop Front Street 

A Filipino immigrant, business owner and community leader, Rick Nava, 64, has been in Lahaina for most of his life. When he pictures what the restored town might look like, he’s more inclined to look back than to look forward.

Since the Aug. 8 fires, 600 Maui businesses have shuttered, according to data from the Hawaii Small Business Development Center.

He hopes Lahaina will be rebuilt in the image of the one he grew up in — made for the local community. He envisions Front Street lined with mom-and-pop stores and the town teeming with Hawaiians again.

“Right now, most of the shops there are catered to the visitors,” he said. “These last few years, the only time we go to Front Street is if we have a friend that’s visiting Lahaina. …The parking is terrible, and when you park you have to pay for it. It’s just not convenient to be there.”

Nava watched flames start to lick his roof as he fled a burning Lahaina in August. His house burned, and he’s spent the last few months on the other side of the island — away from the place he’s called home since he was 10. Bringing people back into town, he said, is the only way forward.

Serving on the mayor’s advisory council, assembled in the aftermath of the fires, he has floated ideas like temporary modular houses aimed at bringing people who lost their homes and fled to shelters back to Lahaina.

“Housing is to us a priority. Everything else will fall secondary,” he said. “We need to have people back.”

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