Yes, well said. Living here and lost everything. We are just now getting our heads together. Trying to deal with everyday life and traumas that continue to plague us. The aid that was here is now dwindling and we have been forced to rush in and meet those deadlines only to find out that a lot of the organizations have used up the funds or you don't qualify. We have been running around trying to deal with and figure out what to do and how we will get through the next few years with everything gone. We realize that we need tourism to survive living here and that many business will be hurting and forced to leave without it. But we also NEED TIME to heal and to regain ourselves.
I live here in Lahaina and I second EVERYTHING you share here and more. Most are free from understanding how retraumatising it is every day here. Every siren that goes off of a fire truck, the winds that are up, the fact that your home may still be standing but you are losing everything now in another way, how you do not feel safe still because the day after you came back from evacuating the sirens go off as the fire is two streets from your house and then two days after that it is literally at your doorstep, how for weeks and even now constantly feeling you have to be evacuation ready just in case, even yesterday there was a flare up of fire on Lahainaluna Road, the fact that Safeway is only one way in one way out like being trapped on Front Street, having to drive to the other side of the island and remembering the first time you drove down there to see bodies inside their cars that if you were to touch them they would disinegrate yet you have to drive there to try to work and then come back home and face it all over again. And this is in addition to all you write here that I have experienced as well. This is my daily life here and our daily life here of what you write here and what I Am sharing as well and yet we are supposed to welcome tourists with a smile and be ready for it all. Indeed, where is the aloha?
And even beyond where is the aloha, where is the compassion? Where is the understanding? Where is the walking a mile in our shoes to even try to begin to understand what we are going through here on the West Side? Honestly, I think Michael Jackson's song summed it up pretty spot on of They Don't Care About Us!
How long must the tourists wait until they can come back? What is the “proper” amount of time for nobody to be making any money there while you grieve? Is your solution for those evil rich people who own houses that they only spend 6 months in, to take over by eminent domain and house people who “really need it”? I am very sorry for your loss, Lareesa, but continuing to hurt your own people by depriving them of a livelihood, on top of the tragedy of losing their homes and possibly some loved ones, is not an answer!
I’d say that until these generational families are allowed in to see and properly say goodbye physically to their ash patch- no one needs to be partying here.
The people here don’t want to dance for you or have to answer the question “so did you lose your home?” over and over and over again while their family is being moved from a hotel room to a metal box in a dust field on the other side of the island. They don’t want to work back in servitude while you gawk at their situation and disrespect their sacred grounds and culture.
Until there is CHILDCARE and school- how do you expect these families to work when there is no safe place for their children to go? Daycares all burned down. Preschools all burned down. You want me to serve your mai tai by the pool with my 4 year old in tow? It’s unrealistic.
And the “evil rich people” you speak of would do well to sell their properties back to the Hawaiian kingdom. They’d gladly take their land back over your measly tourist dollars any day. It’s that colonizer mentality that destroyed the islands in first place.
Yes, well said. Living here and lost everything. We are just now getting our heads together. Trying to deal with everyday life and traumas that continue to plague us. The aid that was here is now dwindling and we have been forced to rush in and meet those deadlines only to find out that a lot of the organizations have used up the funds or you don't qualify. We have been running around trying to deal with and figure out what to do and how we will get through the next few years with everything gone. We realize that we need tourism to survive living here and that many business will be hurting and forced to leave without it. But we also NEED TIME to heal and to regain ourselves.
God Bless Lahaina and her people!
I live here in Lahaina and I second EVERYTHING you share here and more. Most are free from understanding how retraumatising it is every day here. Every siren that goes off of a fire truck, the winds that are up, the fact that your home may still be standing but you are losing everything now in another way, how you do not feel safe still because the day after you came back from evacuating the sirens go off as the fire is two streets from your house and then two days after that it is literally at your doorstep, how for weeks and even now constantly feeling you have to be evacuation ready just in case, even yesterday there was a flare up of fire on Lahainaluna Road, the fact that Safeway is only one way in one way out like being trapped on Front Street, having to drive to the other side of the island and remembering the first time you drove down there to see bodies inside their cars that if you were to touch them they would disinegrate yet you have to drive there to try to work and then come back home and face it all over again. And this is in addition to all you write here that I have experienced as well. This is my daily life here and our daily life here of what you write here and what I Am sharing as well and yet we are supposed to welcome tourists with a smile and be ready for it all. Indeed, where is the aloha?
And even beyond where is the aloha, where is the compassion? Where is the understanding? Where is the walking a mile in our shoes to even try to begin to understand what we are going through here on the West Side? Honestly, I think Michael Jackson's song summed it up pretty spot on of They Don't Care About Us!
How long must the tourists wait until they can come back? What is the “proper” amount of time for nobody to be making any money there while you grieve? Is your solution for those evil rich people who own houses that they only spend 6 months in, to take over by eminent domain and house people who “really need it”? I am very sorry for your loss, Lareesa, but continuing to hurt your own people by depriving them of a livelihood, on top of the tragedy of losing their homes and possibly some loved ones, is not an answer!
I’d say that until these generational families are allowed in to see and properly say goodbye physically to their ash patch- no one needs to be partying here.
The people here don’t want to dance for you or have to answer the question “so did you lose your home?” over and over and over again while their family is being moved from a hotel room to a metal box in a dust field on the other side of the island. They don’t want to work back in servitude while you gawk at their situation and disrespect their sacred grounds and culture.
Until there is CHILDCARE and school- how do you expect these families to work when there is no safe place for their children to go? Daycares all burned down. Preschools all burned down. You want me to serve your mai tai by the pool with my 4 year old in tow? It’s unrealistic.
And the “evil rich people” you speak of would do well to sell their properties back to the Hawaiian kingdom. They’d gladly take their land back over your measly tourist dollars any day. It’s that colonizer mentality that destroyed the islands in first place.