A home in Lahaina, Oregon, as a Miraculously Surviving Wildfire but No Longer Feels Like Home
Andres proudly gives a tour of his home. He says it’s a playroom for his kids. The first room is where one enters the house. The floor is covered with toys and children’s books — everything left out of place as the family evacuated in a haste the day the fire burned.
Back in the kitchen of her family’s home, her dad points to a cabinet door covered with pictures: “This is my grandkids, this is my son with my granddaughter, my niece over there — her apartment burned down too, yeah,” he said.
She grew up in Lahaina but is not going back soon. She was told by a federal agency to start searching for a long-term rental, which she realized this week.
“I would like to contribute to Lahaina getting stronger. Going back to what it is — what it was,” she corrects herself, “when I was growing up.” Her eyes well with tears.
Source: Their house miraculously survived the wildfire, but no longer feels like home
Lahaina, Hawaii — Danilo Andres’s house burned before a fire jumped onto a large, open kitchen
Even before the fires, she recalls, people were selling their homes for cash. Mansions are going up. She’s concerned this tragedy will accelerate the trend. She wants to be able to raise her child here.
She remembers the house in Lahaina, where her father bought it 30 years ago, being surrounded by fields of sugarcane and having a view of the ocean from the second floor deck. Over time, it’s turned into strip malls and housing subdivisions.
Property is expensive here, she says, and childcare is not affordable – families in Lahaina rely on each other and it helps to live in a multiple household compound where there’s always someone to watch kids and make meals.
“It’s multigenerational. It’s multiple families, at least two different units, if not four and some maybe unpermitted structures,” she says. “That’s the only way we could live in Hawaii. That’s the only way we can live in Lahaina.”
“They want to open to the timeshare owners and for tourism,” she says, referring to hotel management at the place where her family’s staying, “so they relocated us to a less attractive sister property. But it’s fine.” She appreciates that she can cook healthy food for her family in the kitchen.
“I’m living out of tote bags. I’m living day by day and I haven’t been able to bring myself to unpack, because I don’t know if we’re leaving,” she says. Already her family has moved hotels a few times. She’s been given news of an imminent move once more.
LAHAINA, Hawaii — It’s a sunny, breezy morning in Maui and 60-year-old Danilo Andres is standing in his house — a big open kitchen on the ground floor with a grill and a stove. The pots are hanging from the fence. He says his family live in this place.
It is difficult to comprehend the randomness of the wind-generated fire on the second floor of his house. His homes and a surrounding cluster of others burned, but the fire jumped his homes and burned to the right, left, and back. “It’s unbelievable,” says Andres, still in disbelief.
Last week, officials in Maui ended the search-and-rescue operation. More than 400 people are missing and 115 are confirmed to have died. Nearly a month after the wildfire destroyed much of downtown Lahaina, some — like Andres — are returning to their homes despite official warnings it may not be safe.
Source: Their house miraculously survived the wildfire, but no longer feels like home
Water and electricity are out in his house miraculously survived the wildfire, but no longer feels like home (hearts-of-a-family-home)
Aside from the lack of water and electricity, there’s damage to the roof. He doesn’t know if there is structural damage to the walls or if there is soil contamination on his property.
The family is now mostly housed in hotels on Maui. The couple are sleeping at the hotel. His wife works there as a seamstress. He says that they need to come back with running water.
He loads gallons of water into his car and drives three miles to his house to clean and to water his banana, papaya and avocado trees in the backyard and the potted plants around his property.
He also feeds his animals. He said his chickens and dogs are keeping watch. The chickens chase each other with loud noise, while the dogs bark protectively.
Source: Their house miraculously survived the wildfire, but no longer feels like home
Taking care of his house miraculously survived the fire, but no longer feels like home: A Guatemalan-American man’s story unfolded
When friends told him his house was still standing, he didn’t believe them. He said after he saw it for the first time, that he was so happy, that he and his wife came in and cried.
He says that he received money from his home insurance to cover his roof repairs. He’s planning to do much of the work himself; he built several additions since he bought the property it in 1990.
Every day, there is a new layer of ash on the cabinets in the house and pots in the outdoor kitchen. Every day, he works to sweep it away. It’s difficult, but you don’t know where to start. He said he’s not giving up.
“I like my place and I don’t want to sell it”, he said while standing in his living room. I got big family, you know.”
The man wearing a hat with an American flag on it is talking about growing this from three bedrooms to a compound with a cottage and different wings. His three children, three grandchildren and their pets have all lived here over the past three decades. Often other family members stay at the home for extended periods, as well.
“Every day, you should see my family, my neighbor always crowded in my place.” New year’s celebrations were hosted at his home by Andres. “We put tables in the driveway and people dances outside,” he says. His house sits in a cul-de-sac, away from the street: “Everybody can yell, my grandkids scream and nobody bothered you know,” he reminisced.
Going back to the Philippines, he feels, is not an option. “My kids were born and raised in Lahaina, my family is here,” he adds. “This is where I call home.” He and his wife are naturalized US citizens.
Source: Their house miraculously survived the wildfire, but no longer feels like home
Construction of a Family Life Center in the Ohana Hope Village after Maui’s Fires, and an Arellano Suggestion
“I just wish they wouldn’t go every day,” says Arellano with a sigh, “but I know they have to. And I know they’re just trying to clean, should they get the boot at the Sheraton, and they have to move home, you know?”
The Arellanos are at a hotel with their son. She’s a counselor at Lahainaluna High School in Lahaina and has been on administrative leave since the fire, though the district has called school staff back to begin planning the return to classes. Her husband is a bellman at the hotel.
She hopes her parents won’t eat the vegetables and fruits in the garden or the chickens pecking in the yard. She doesn’t think the air is safe, and the food may be contaminated.
Arellano remembers the day the fire broke vividly. “I could see black smoke first, then the fires.” She and her baby were trapped in traffic in downtown Lahaina after they got in the car.
Natural disasters cause a desperate rush to find housing for the people who lost their homes. A massive military jet delivered pop-up homes after Maui’s wildfires.
Now the modular units are transforming a grassy 10-acre field into 85 homes, with housing for around 250 people, according to the Family Life Center, a social service group working to create the Ohana Hope Village.
The first temporary housing modules arrived less than two weeks after fires hit Lahaina and other areas, said David Sellers, the principal architect of Hawaii Off-Grid Architecture and Engineering, a leader in the project.
The Family Life Center: A High-Speed Population-Up House for Families Providing a Place to Call Home after Maui Fire Disaster
“I got a picture of them loading on a C-17 and I said, ‘Oh wow, this is real. Yeah, let’s hurry up.’ He said that they came up with the plan after working through the night and weekend.
The tragedy in Lahaina happened suddenly, taking a few hours to wipe out centuries of history and displace thousands of people. The community was quick to help fire survivors with housing and essential items.
“Everyone is behind what’s happening here, and it’s pretty much unprecedented,” Sellers said, noting the support he’d seen from individuals, business leaders and local officials.
The Family Life Center’s CEO said the organization had already worked with people who were affected by the fire, so it was only a matter of time before they looked at other housing options.
“We decided everyone needs to have private and easily accessible bathrooms and kitchens,” Cumming said. The rapid assembly single-family style shelters were the focus of the planning.
The biggest challenge once the walls are up is to link the units. They’re prewired and are insulated, which is a crucial detail in Hawaii’s heat.
The project still has a ways to go, but the interest is tangible: “We have already received 145 applications online,” Ashley Kelly, Family Life Center’s chief operating officer, told NPR.
One module can be used on its own, or joined to create twice the living space. The first phase of the plan calls for 60 modules — eight single units, and 26 double units, to cater to families. The master plan has a playground and gathering spaces.
Source: Pop-up units spring up after Maui fire disaster, giving families a place to call home
Continest’s first pop-up building sends families a place to call home: Yan Pronin’s response to Maui’s fire disaster
The first group of pop-up buildings were originally intended to be used for people displaced by the war in Ukraine.
That phase of the operation was orchestrated by Yan Pronin, CEO of Continest’s U.S. division. In other humanitarian projects, Pronin says, his company has worked with the World Health Organization to deliver mobile hospitals, and to send housing to refugee camps in Ukraine, his home country.
When the Family Life Center got in touch, Pronin said, his sector of the company couldn’t spare any stock — but another division, in Hungary, had some units available. It took a “small miracle” to get them to Maui.
Hungary tapped the international and NATO-based Heavy Airlift Wing to send the housing modules to Hawaii aboard a C-17 cargo jet, using up 80% of the country’s allotted annual flying time in the organization, according to Pronin.
For Pronin, the work in Maui matches his own sense of mission. “I’m a fire survivor myself,” he says. “I was pulled out of a burning building in a very young age, and the building literally collapsed behind me.”
Source: Pop-up units spring up after Maui fire disaster, giving families a place to call home
What are the next steps in finding a permanent home in Maui? A proposal for a pop-up village and a place for future permanent homes to populate Maui
There are more modules coming. It would be by sea where they arrived in October. If they come by air, they will arrive in Maui by the end of September.
Plans like the pop-up village are just one way thousands of people might soon be able to leave hotels and find more permanent housing, during the yearslong effort to build new homes to replace the staggering losses.