Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ EXCLUSIVE： Democrats ABANDONED Maui residents, few houses rebuilt

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. An incredible show today, if I may say so myself.

00:00:03.920 We flew to Lahaina, Maui for a day and a half, not for a vacation,

00:00:08.340 but to see what has become of the town where a wildfire tore through it a year and a half ago,

00:00:13.760 killing more than a hundred. What was on our mind is how is the reconstruction coming along?

00:00:19.400 A lot of people in Los Angeles would like to know what we found, I think, will shock you.

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00:01:28.300 All right, here's today's podcast.

00:01:29.480 A year and a half ago, a wildfire tore through Lahaina, Maui,

00:01:48.600 killing more than a hundred people and burning hundreds of homes.

00:01:51.680 It's been a year and a half.

00:01:53.480 So how's reconstruction going?

00:01:55.700 It's February 10th and this is the Ezra LeVance Show.

00:01:58.600 You're ready for freedom!

00:02:01.820 Shame on you, you censorious bug!

00:02:14.060 A year and a half ago, wildfires tore through the town of Lahaina, Maui,

00:02:18.520 killing more than a hundred people.

00:02:20.620 Hundreds of homes and other businesses were destroyed.

00:02:23.060 So how is the reconstruction coming along?

00:02:26.640 It came to mind because we were looking at Los Angeles and the wildfires there that killed

00:02:31.460 dozens and did more than $250 billion worth of property damage.

00:02:38.100 The fires in Maui were more deadly but affected less property.

00:02:41.560 Still, it would be a good way to predict the future in how quickly things could be repaired,

00:02:47.720 especially since both jurisdictions, Maui and Los Angeles, are dominated by Democrats and environmentalists.

00:02:56.200 What would that mean?

00:02:57.720 Well, we went to Maui and we were shocked.

00:02:59.720 The vast majority of homes that were burnt have not been rebuilt at all.

00:03:05.220 In fact, the lots are just covered with a gray gravel.

00:03:09.000 No signs of reconstruction whatsoever in more than 90% of the cases.

00:03:14.520 There are signs of construction, though, high on a hill.

00:03:18.560 FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is building a kind of internment camp.

00:03:24.300 No bars or locks on the door, but tiny homes where the fire survivors have to live far away in terrible conditions.

00:03:33.280 We went to Maui, talked to the locals, and we're bringing you footage that I don't think has been seen by anyone else.

00:03:40.720 To follow along, go to thetruthaboutthefires.com, where we compare the response in L.A. to that of Maui and to that of Jasper, Alberta, Canada.

00:03:52.240 Here's my report from Maui.

00:03:55.580 Ezra Levant here.

00:03:56.360 I'm standing in Lahaina, Maui, one of the most beautiful places in the world, but I'm not here for a vacation.

00:04:01.880 I'm here for a 24-hour news visit with our videographer, Lincoln Jay.

00:04:06.920 We were here a year and a half ago when a wildfire swept down from these hills, blasted by 80-mile-an-hour wind, scorching everything in their path.

00:04:16.620 It was like a firestorm, literally, a tornado of fire.

00:04:20.520 It killed more than 100 people and wounded many dozens more.

00:04:24.820 The problem with so much of Hawaii is that there's really a circular road around the perimeter of the island, so there were only one or two ways out of the entire town.

00:04:36.680 People rushed to get out, panicked, abandoned their vehicles, thereby causing a form of roadblock.

00:04:43.040 The same thing happened in the wildfires in Los Angeles, by the way.

00:04:46.440 We're here a year and a half after the fire because we want to have a cautionary tale for Los Angeles.

00:04:53.420 Los Angeles just had a massive fire, the fire itself many times larger than the fire here in Maui, approximately $300 billion worth of damage, several dozen dead.

00:05:04.740 The devastation on a physical scale was larger.

00:05:09.340 We saw how Donald Trump has weighed in in Los Angeles demanding that the Democrat governor and the Democrat mayor cut through the red tape to allow recovery sooner rather than later.

00:05:20.400 You have emergency powers just like I do, and I'm exercising my emergency powers.

00:05:26.080 You have to exercise them also.

00:05:27.740 I did exercise them.

00:05:29.040 Because I looked, I mean, you have a very powerful emergency power, and you can do everything within 24 hours.

00:05:35.240 Yes.

00:05:35.600 And I knew that Hawaii had a Democrat governor.

00:05:38.420 This is a Democrat state.

00:05:40.120 And so here we are, and looking down by the water, you can still see with the naked eye.

00:05:45.820 It's as if only weeks had passed.

00:05:48.820 The debris is almost completely removed.

00:05:51.920 I would say fewer than 10% of the lots have any sort of construction at all.

00:05:57.900 It's a kind of ghost town.

00:05:59.580 And we just saw a bunch of little mini houses that we were told are a temporary FEMA solution.

00:06:05.900 They're like, almost like a gingerbread house.

00:06:08.400 They're called tiny homes.

00:06:10.360 Talking to some locals, there's no hope in sight.

00:06:13.640 There's no timeline by which this city will be revived.

00:06:17.440 And so all sorts of schemes and plans are creeping in.

00:06:21.020 The Democrat governor has said he doesn't want there to be residences like there were before.

00:06:26.740 In some areas, he wants wetlands back.

00:06:29.560 So he wants an environmental replacement for people.

00:06:33.280 Because of the fire, which was a first crisis, there's now a second crisis.

00:06:39.480 The crisis of politics, the crisis of red tape, of people not getting permits, and people just abandoning the area.

00:06:46.880 And so the vultures come in, whether it's a political vulture like the governor or a real estate developer vulture, I don't know.

00:06:53.880 But I know one thing, hundreds and hundreds of Mauians who used to live here have simply given up and moved on, either elsewhere in Hawaii, or they've moved back to the mainland of the United States.

00:07:06.080 This is a cautionary tale for Los Angeles and for Canada, too.

00:07:12.000 There's a third fire I'd like to talk about, the wildfires in Jasper, Alberta, Canada.

00:07:17.500 And it's similar both to the Palisades Fire in L.A. and the Lahaina Fire here, in that, of course, it was caused by nature, although I think it's assumed that the fire in L.A. was caused by human form.

00:07:29.860 Because there had not been proper forest management and culling of the dead fuel, the fire in all three cases whipped through the town, causing much more damage than if there had been a proper forest management.

00:07:42.980 So I'm not here to say that the fires in Jasper, Lahaina, or L.A. would not have happened, but they would have been less likely to happen and less severe had environmentalist politics not won the day.

00:07:55.940 And again, in all three cases, you have governments who are putting their own political aims ahead of the interests of the local residents.

00:08:05.720 In Jasper, the province is ready to fund single-family homes, but Jasper is in a national park, so they have a kind of federal jurisdiction.

00:08:15.400 And they're refusing, they're insisting on utopian socialist, low-income, multifamily homes.

00:08:21.440 It's a bizarre replacement of what Jasper was really like.

00:08:26.260 Same thing has been threatened in L.A.

00:08:28.760 The Palisades, a very wealthy, beautiful neighborhood, the mayor and her hand-picked recovery czar want instead to have low-income housing. 0.92

00:08:39.040 And here in Lahaina, I'm not quite sure.

00:08:41.460 The governor's talked about an environmental solution, and it wouldn't surprise me if the land would be snapped up by a developer taking advantage of the fact that the red tape has strangled this town.

00:08:52.260 Donald Trump went to L.A. and cut through the red tape, or at least tried to, in a day.

00:08:56.960 I think he should come out here to Democrat Hawaii, too.

00:09:00.800 It's very far away.

00:09:01.780 It's a very long journey from Washington, D.C.

00:09:04.080 It's a very Democrat place.

00:09:05.860 But you know what?

00:09:06.640 These are Americans, whether they vote blue or vote red.

00:09:09.420 And I know that Donald Trump has recently said that he wants to cut off almost all foreign aid.

00:09:14.800 Well, this place needs that aid as much as Los Angeles does, just like in Jasper, Alberta, Canada.

00:09:21.540 It needs someone to cut through the red tape.

00:09:24.060 Now, Donald Trump won't help there, but maybe some other politicians can.

00:09:27.980 We're going to continue our journey around here in Lahaina, a beautiful place where a terrible thing happened.

00:09:33.180 More than 100 people perished in the fires here in Lahaina, Maui.

00:09:52.920 There's no family in town that didn't lose someone or know someone who was lost.

00:09:58.680 One of those men is Kenneth Durrell.

00:10:00.740 He was a survivor, and he wrote the book, Ashes of Paradise, Surviving the Lahaina Wildfire.

00:10:05.280 And he joins us now.

00:10:06.040 Thanks very much for meeting with us.

00:10:07.780 Thanks for letting me come on board.

00:10:09.400 I guess you and the other survivors are the lucky ones, but there must have been terrible psychological pain of losing loved ones and wondering why maybe you were spared.

00:10:17.680 There's a lot of burdens on the survivors, aren't there?

00:10:19.660 Yeah, our home actually survived.

00:10:22.660 It was one of the few neighborhoods that did survive.

00:10:25.520 So I witnessed the fire deep into the evening, and unfortunately I knew several people that did perish.

00:10:33.060 A lot of people that, you know, almost everyone that I knew lost their home.

00:10:36.960 And then in the aftermath, a lot of people had to move off island.

00:10:40.280 They couldn't afford to stay.

00:10:41.200 So I've lost, it feels like you've lost more than just the 100 people that perished.

00:10:47.940 The ripple effect afterwards, it's still to this day impacting us.

00:10:53.060 Hearts and prayers to those that were lost in our fire, 102 souls that didn't make it out that day.

00:11:00.780 Just so thankful for a wonderful, resilient community that we have here that was able to come together and get the cleanup process done.

00:11:11.260 Yes, there was a lot of red tape and permitting, and we're still dealing with that.

00:11:16.880 Everybody has their own level of recovering that they need to do.

00:11:21.380 Some people left and left the island and moved to the other side of the island or took their insurance money and bought a new house, and they're not rebuilding.

00:11:30.440 A lot of people, you know, were fortunate enough to get their properties cleaned up, and the cleanup process went really well.

00:11:38.200 And this memorial, thank you to one of our community members and leaders, Soakai Taufa.

00:11:44.400 He came here, and he's the caretaker here pretty much.

00:11:47.520 Everybody knows that, and just really thank him for making this possible.

00:11:52.900 And he built that teardrop, and he did get help from the community, but a lot of it was out of his own pocket.

00:11:57.900 And he was able to put this monument up in memory of those that we lost and the teardrop that represents.

00:12:06.620 Was there any way to fight it, or was it just completely overwhelming inferno?

00:12:11.720 Typically, because of the rugged terrain of Maui, airdrops are what they typically use.

00:12:17.520 The winds that we had, they couldn't get the helicopters off the ground.

00:12:20.320 It was 80, 90-mile-an-hour winds.

00:12:22.100 I'm over 200 pounds.

00:12:24.000 There was one gust that blew me backwards.

00:12:26.160 I almost went down the staircase.

00:12:28.760 So I don't know how much wind force that is, but it was enormous.

00:12:32.720 I've never felt wind like that before.

00:12:34.280 Luckily, by the next day, the fire was subsided, and the winds had subsided to the point that they could start putting out some of the hot spots.

00:12:41.800 I saw firsthand how bad the town was.

00:12:44.420 I did not recognize the town that I'd been in for over 30 years.

00:12:48.140 Why don't you talk to me a little bit about fire prevention and the first response?

00:12:52.240 Well, if you've been here for the last couple of days, we just had a thunderstorm that went overhead, heavy rains.

00:12:58.960 I got notifications on my phone of thunderstorms approaching, flash floods approaching.

00:13:03.720 On the day of the fire, I didn't get any notifications.

00:13:06.180 We have the most advanced alert system anywhere in the world.

00:13:11.260 The state of Hawaii has more emergency sirens than Indonesia or anywhere else.

00:13:15.420 Those are those green klaxons you see everywhere.

00:13:18.260 And every month, they test them.

00:13:20.220 They do the air raid sirens to let us know that there's some sort of a natural disaster or some sort of emergency.

00:13:27.100 On the day of the fire, we got no notification.

00:13:29.420 We had a miscommunication with the electric company.

00:13:32.080 They were telling the police department some of the lines are live.

00:13:36.920 We don't know which one.

00:13:38.100 So the police were blocking roads, preventing evacuations because they didn't know if you could drive over the power lines.

00:13:45.080 We had hillsides that have not been maintained.

00:13:47.520 We've got dry grass all over the hillsides.

00:13:50.860 And we've had droughts.

00:13:52.800 We've had water that's been diverted.

00:13:54.680 And so, you know, if you go just a few miles down the road, you will see lush green golf courses.

00:14:01.100 You'll see waterfalls flowing in hotels and swimming pools.

00:14:04.720 And yet Lahaina is absolutely dry.

00:14:07.120 It's bone dry.

00:14:07.820 It's like a desert.

00:14:09.180 The water is there, but it's being mismanaged.

00:14:12.200 You know, it seems like Lahaina was forgotten about for a little while.

00:14:15.740 And then all of a sudden, after the L.A. fires, unfortunately, you know, then we started getting more attention back because of the similarities.

00:14:25.820 Hopefully, they saw us and what we had gone through, and they got to learn from what we went through because it was similar.

00:14:33.820 But, you know, yeah, their area was a lot bigger.

00:14:36.940 But as far as the evacuation went, hopefully, the communities knew, like, don't wait for an evacuation.

00:14:44.060 You know, you see the fire, you smell the smoke, just, you know, evacuate.

00:14:48.220 Don't wait for an order.

00:14:49.220 Hawaii took care of Hawaii. 1.00

00:14:51.260 I didn't see the National Guard for probably the first week.

00:14:56.280 I don't think that I saw FEMA until they stood up on stage behind President Biden.

00:15:00.200 And then he told everybody about a kitchen fire that he had and handed every household $700.

00:15:05.820 When the average household in Lahaina had eight people, it's about enough to go to Burger King.

00:15:11.640 To make a long story short, I almost lost my wife, my 67 Corvette, and my cat.

00:15:22.100 But all kidding aside, we got assistance and so on.

00:15:25.280 And I'm not trying to take anything away from that.

00:15:27.520 But it didn't seem like it was enough at the time.

00:15:31.040 When we had Oprah and The Rock putting together money that were actually getting into residents' pockets, and the government did not.

00:15:39.320 I would say most of the lots, there's no construction.

00:15:43.620 Is that accurate?

00:15:44.900 Well, a lot of people didn't have full coverage.

00:15:48.860 Like, they didn't have enough money.

00:15:49.860 You know, things have changed.

00:15:51.400 The value has gone up.

00:15:52.720 There's no more construction up here.

00:15:56.300 It's like a ghost town.

00:15:57.780 It's like the end of the world.

00:16:00.240 Maybe something's going to be built there.

00:16:01.980 I see some diggers.

00:16:03.060 I don't know what they're doing.

00:16:04.260 I'm not saying it's zero, but it's a small fraction.

00:16:08.360 You can see a few homes being rebuilt.

00:16:11.380 One there, three there.

00:16:13.200 But for every one that's being built, there's got to be 10 empty lots.

00:16:17.980 This lot has on it a certification by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers certifying that the debris has been removed.

00:16:25.740 No asbestos.

00:16:27.100 There's erosion control.

00:16:29.020 I don't see the EPA giving it approval.

00:16:31.900 But this one and that one and that one and that one and that one and that one all over here, the debris has finally been removed.

00:16:38.840 But there's no construction.

00:16:40.720 It's not even close.

00:16:41.880 If you recall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers warned the Pacific Palisades residents that it could take 18 months to remove the debris.

00:16:53.640 So this slow motion strangulation by red tape could be coming to Los Angeles.

00:17:01.040 Look, there's a car there that's still absolutely burnt out, hasn't been removed.

00:17:08.060 Whose duty was that?

00:17:09.620 There's one brave soul building a new house there.

00:17:12.580 I wish him well.

00:17:13.760 But everything around him is burnt out.

00:17:16.360 There's someone living in a camper.

00:17:18.900 A year and a half later, they're living in a camper.

00:17:21.380 While massive empty lots are covered over by gravel, there's nothing going on here.

00:17:29.040 Ah, there's some early foundation work.

00:17:37.020 A year and a half in, it looks like there's going to build a home there.

00:17:40.380 I'm glad to hear it.

00:17:41.260 Why are none of those places being rebuilt a year and a half later?

00:17:44.180 There does seem to be a lot of red tape with that.

00:17:46.900 Do you know where any of that red tape is coming from?

00:17:48.720 Like, that's sort of a generic word.

00:17:50.000 But is there an environmental permit or a development permit or a planning permit?

00:17:54.500 And at what level?

00:17:55.980 Like, who's saying no?

00:17:57.280 I'll leave that one for someone else to speak on.

00:18:00.520 There are people that are holding up the process.

00:18:03.440 I know that our mayor and governor could be doing more.

00:18:06.160 The houses should have, you know, permits and everything, that should be just fast-tracked.

00:18:10.380 Get the town rebuilt.

00:18:12.500 There's a lot of people that are not getting their permits because of how they've got their coastal zoning drawn out.

00:18:18.300 If you're on that side, on the ocean side of the line, then you're not getting permitted.

00:18:23.580 But there's a lot going on dealing with that.

00:18:26.440 And then again, there's other things going on as far as, like, people that can get their permits.

00:18:32.060 For whatever reason, they're held up.

00:18:37.720 Yeah, I heard it's hard to get a permit.

00:18:39.480 You know, the state makes it difficult for the people to rebuild.

00:18:45.100 There's a lot of regulations and a lot of permits you've got to go through.

00:18:48.900 And it makes it, I think it makes it more tough on the people.

00:18:51.920 It's sad that, you know, it takes so many, it takes a long time for, to get permits for local families.

00:18:57.940 And, you know, the process should be easier and faster for them.

00:19:03.560 FEMA is the budget.

00:19:04.680 And they micromanage out to these other entities, whether it be Red Cross or Lima Charlie that's handling the housing.

00:19:14.180 But they put all these rules into place.

00:19:16.400 And it really felt like you were on parole.

00:19:18.140 You had to check in every couple of days.

00:19:20.120 If you missed two phone calls, you were out.

00:19:22.500 It was very troubling to people that were in such a stressful situation.

00:19:26.500 They'd lost friends, loved ones.

00:19:28.500 You've lost everything that you own.

00:19:30.600 Why is it so slow?

00:19:32.280 We know there's people who want to rebuild.

00:19:35.600 They're being put into tiny houses way up on the hills.

00:19:39.620 Why are none of those places being rebuilt a year and a half later?

00:19:42.600 There does seem to be a lot of red tape with that.

00:19:44.560 They could have rebuilt those houses down there in 18 months.

00:19:50.360 Instead, they built these soulless, prefabricated cells.

00:19:56.060 I don't even want to call them homes.

00:19:57.400 I'm not disparaging those who are living in there.

00:19:59.900 The opposite.

00:20:00.600 I'm condemning the politicians and the planners who, in the name of red tape or environmentalism or we need more studies or there's permits,

00:20:09.400 they've managed to build these tiny homes for people who are obviously sensitive about living here, but they haven't rebuilt actual homes.

00:20:26.500 We're amongst some of the tiny homes that are being built for Lahaina.

00:20:31.860 I'm going to call them fire refugees. 1.00

00:20:33.760 The government is building these pods.

00:20:35.760 They're so tiny, they're sort of prefab homes, but who would want to live here? 1.00

00:20:42.460 It really feels like some sort of internment camp.

00:20:44.980 So you have a pod there and a balcony, but there's no grass, there's no trees, there's no landscaping.

00:20:52.540 It's so barren, it's almost like a moon unit or something.

00:20:57.280 And there's different varieties.

00:20:59.420 You can see that one sort of looks like a garden shed.

00:21:01.980 I Googled and these sort of pop-up manufactured homes are $20,000 or $30,000, depending on the details.

00:21:10.920 And you can see why.

00:21:12.100 They're so small.

00:21:13.460 It actually feels like that Australian COVID internment camp that they built as a kind of low-security jail.

00:21:20.920 It's so frustrating for me.

00:21:23.780 And I don't even live here.

00:21:24.760 Imagine seeing the land you were in.

00:21:27.580 It was burnt a year and a half ago.

00:21:29.400 It's been cleared.

00:21:30.520 The U.S. Army Engineer Corps says it's fine.

00:21:34.020 So every person we've spoken to about it says it's permits, it's licenses, it's governments, it's delaying.

00:21:41.060 Why?

00:21:41.720 They seem to have built these tiny homes quick enough.

00:21:44.800 Why have they not allowed the rebuilding of Lahaina itself?

00:21:48.400 I think there are hundreds of these.

00:21:50.780 And over there you can see they're going to have a recreation area with a few barbecues under some hut.

00:21:56.920 What are those?

00:21:57.980 Who built them?

00:21:59.220 Like they look really tiny.

00:22:00.720 A lot of those are provided by FEMA.

00:22:03.880 Are they temporary?

00:22:04.860 Or are they, what's the deal?

00:22:06.100 Yeah, they're temporary.

00:22:07.540 They're temporary.

00:22:08.360 And there's different deals.

00:22:09.700 Some of them people are going to have to actually pay to live in them.

00:22:12.340 So there's all these different things going on.

00:22:14.440 Like not everything's the same.

00:22:15.980 You've already established your life.

00:22:17.420 You've built your home.

00:22:18.620 You've paid it off.

00:22:19.760 You're placed into a government housing.

00:22:22.080 And then when the proclamation ends after 18 months, you've got to pay this exorbitant rent.

00:22:28.260 FEMA, by coming and setting up the housing, they were paying $5,000 for a studio, $7,500 for a one-bedroom, $10,000 for a two-bedroom.

00:22:37.840 They set the market so high that now the rental prices on Maui are unrealistic.

00:22:43.440 I don't want to speak ill of the fact that there is assistance, the housing is there, and that's appreciative.

00:22:51.620 But what they're providing, it doesn't look like the most comfortable living situation.

00:22:58.480 I don't even want to say the word, but it's a FEMA camp.

00:23:00.740 And they are working on these things.

00:23:02.480 I'm seeing progress.

00:23:03.800 I don't want to say that this isn't happening, but it's been a year and a half.

00:23:07.820 And I don't know how much longer people can wait to get back to their normal life.

00:23:14.300 There's no lawn.

00:23:15.160 There's no yard.

00:23:16.540 This is like a prison.

00:23:17.920 I'm angry for them.

00:23:18.860 I'm angry with them.

00:23:20.140 Things aren't going well here.

00:23:21.460 Don't take it from me.

00:23:22.420 Take it from the signs of ordinary citizens who are frustrated by the pace of things and the direction of things.

00:23:29.400 Here's some signs saying, what don't you understand?

00:23:32.020 Residents only.

00:23:33.100 Look at this.

00:23:33.760 No tourists, no pictures, no stopping.

00:23:35.280 Keep out.

00:23:35.900 Local traffic only.

00:23:36.780 Residents only.

00:23:37.820 I'd be angry, too, if I had lost loved ones and a year and a half into it, my life was not back on track.

00:23:44.780 I'd be angry, too.

00:23:45.920 Hey, Kenneth, what's this sign?

00:23:47.860 Who's behind it and what do they do?

00:23:50.100 It's my understanding that the goal here is to, if you're unable to remain in Lahaina, that you would sell it to the land trust and that that way the property would stay within Lahaina.

00:24:04.720 We don't want Lahaina.

00:24:05.720 We don't want Lahaina to be bought up by outside entities and to change.

00:24:10.080 So the goal of this is to keep Lahaina within Lahaina.

00:24:14.680 And so that we keep the character that we keep the character that we had and keep the families that we know.

00:24:20.540 What is the future for this lovely waterfront property?

00:24:24.960 You can imagine who has their eyes on it.

00:24:27.980 Everyone from environmentalists to politicians to billionaires who want their own luxury hideaway.

00:24:34.680 If you can put aside the fact that you knew homes and families used to live here, it's pretty.

00:24:40.320 The greenery has come back.

00:24:42.260 But you're looking at the ruins of an earlier civilization.

00:24:46.160 One, two, three, four, five stories.

00:24:50.060 Probably several hundred people used to live there.

00:24:53.720 It hasn't been taken down.

00:24:56.140 There must have been a hundred houses here and that major apartment block.

00:25:02.500 And none of them are any closer to being rebuilt than they were 18 months ago.

00:25:07.380 Notice, enter at own risk.

00:25:09.260 Health and physical hazards exist.

00:25:11.960 Why is that risk still there 18 months later?

00:25:15.520 That looks like it was maybe a movie theater or a mall.

00:25:19.640 It's boarded up.

00:25:20.780 Is it because there was no business case to open it, given that so much of the town has been relocated?

00:25:27.100 Old Lahaina Center.

00:25:28.400 The entire shopping mall is still shut down.

00:25:31.320 Is that the future for the Pacific Palisades?

00:25:34.100 Here's the McDonald's.

00:25:35.540 There's still ads in the windows, but that place is closed.

00:25:39.700 Checkpoint ahead.

00:25:40.560 Is there really still a checkpoint 18 months later?

00:25:44.440 You can see what used to be here.

00:25:46.200 Nohoku Jewelers, Billabong, Vintage European Posters, Fleetwood's General Store, South Pacific Island Art, Gary Savage Artist.

00:25:54.900 So that's what used to be there.

00:25:56.740 They haven't even cleared the debris away from there.

00:25:59.340 We were told by a private security guard we weren't allowed to film.

00:26:03.180 I don't believe that.

00:26:04.400 There's no public interest reason for that.

00:26:05.900 We're not filming state secrets and we're not showing anyone.

00:26:08.720 We're not violating any individual's privacy.

00:26:11.220 I think they were ashamed of what's going on.

00:26:13.020 And there were some residents who didn't want to be filmed.

00:26:16.200 I understand that.

00:26:16.920 And we did not film any residents.

00:26:18.900 You won't see any faces of any people.

00:26:21.000 We avoided the tiny homes that were being occupied as much as we could.

00:26:25.200 But I think they are sick of being treated like some curiosity, like some problem that has to be moved around or pushed around.

00:26:35.340 I would be furious and frustrated too if my property near the water was burnt to a crisp and the state wouldn't let me move in, but they put me in a FEMA camp.

00:26:45.680 Do you think that Donald Trump should come to Lahaina, check it out and say, I don't know what the red tape is, but we got to cut through it?

00:26:53.880 Like, do you think that he should pay attention to Lahaina?

00:26:56.320 If he needs to come to Lahaina to make that happen, you know, anything that will help get through the bureaucracy and the red tape and move this forward so people can move back on and not end up having to sell out or move away.

00:27:10.680 Anything that we can do to help these people out because a lot of the money that was donated, you know, didn't go to the homeowners to rebuild.

00:27:19.940 So they seem to be the ones that are suffering the most is that homeowners that fell short on their insurance that didn't get any help from FEMA that had to go to live in a condo somewhere, pay $7,000 a month for a one or two bedroom while they're waiting to get permitted and while they're waiting to get money and they can't afford it.

00:27:40.560 So it's been a struggle and we already had a housing crisis on Maui before the fire.

00:27:46.300 I definitely hope that we have some leader, whether it's Trump or anyone else out there.

00:27:51.580 I just hope that we have leadership that that does care about the victims and that will do things.

00:27:57.720 As you said, we've got tiny homes and they're up on a hillside and they're all just pushed together next to each other.

00:28:05.460 Why can't they be put on the lot while, you know, at least you'd be in your neighborhood.

00:28:10.420 You'd have a home on your lot, maybe, you know, put it off to the corner while you build the house.

00:28:15.080 I don't know without being political about it.

00:28:17.640 I think, you know, it speaks in in actions and if he's willing to take these actions and and and be that common sense person, you know, that he says he is and and do the things that that will help us move forward.

00:28:32.240 We deserve the same treatment that Cal looks like California is getting.

00:28:36.420 So hopefully, like we're not just left out of that process that he's doing in California.

00:28:42.740 And I know that it's a Democratic state, but then he's a Republican.

00:28:46.160 But it seems like the community is coming together, you know, because that's what disasters do.

00:28:51.840 I was hoping that after seeing that interview when he went to California, I was, you know, in back of my mind, I was like, he needs to come to Lahaina.

00:28:59.120 He needs to come to Maui because these Democrats, they're taking forever.

00:29:03.860 And, you know, I've heard that Trump wants to shake up the FEMA system.

00:29:07.720 My experience with FEMA was not ideal.

00:29:10.820 I wasn't particularly fond of FEMA.

00:29:14.060 However, we need their assistance.

00:29:16.380 So I don't want the program to be cut or budgets or things that would that would impact the victims negatively, but some reform to make the program more efficient, to make it actually more helpful to the victims of both Lahaina and Los Angeles and wherever the next disaster is.

00:29:34.240 We're not done yet.

00:29:36.840 I'm standing in the middle of Hanukkah Y Park in Maui.

00:29:40.080 Beautiful people coming here for picnics, a dip in the sea before sunset, kids playing in playgrounds, birthday parties.

00:29:49.320 A year and a half ago, it was very different.

00:29:51.500 This park became a de facto refugee camp or relief camp for the Maui wildfires.

00:29:58.480 This is where locals came with food and medicine, clothing, toys, educational materials for kids,

00:30:05.460 whatever they thought was lacking in the community in the days and indeed weeks after the fire, ordinary people brought here.

00:30:14.120 It wasn't government workers.

00:30:15.460 It wasn't FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

00:30:19.220 It wasn't any government.

00:30:21.180 In fact, the government were absent.

00:30:23.840 There was no Internet in the area.

00:30:26.080 So individuals brought some Starlink.

00:30:27.920 Rebel News actually brought a Starlink system all the way from Canada to share it with the apartment block where we came to do some reporting.

00:30:34.980 And we looked at what was going on at Hanukkah Y Park here, and we volunteered to go to Walmart and buy some stuff ourself.

00:30:42.800 And then we thought, well, let's crowdfund.

00:30:44.720 So we set up a crowdfund opportunity, and more than $51,000 U.S. was raised for Maui wildfire relief.

00:30:54.060 I'm very proud of our Rebel News viewers for doing that.

00:30:57.080 And it felt appropriate because going to document a community in the aftermath of a tragedy feels more than voyeuristic.

00:31:06.840 It felt like perhaps we were taking some of the dignity from people by talking to them in their hour of vulnerability.

00:31:15.120 So giving back to the community by crowdfunding more than $51,000 felt like a way to meet our moral debt to these people.

00:31:26.840 But over there is the government's vision of the future.

00:31:31.860 Pod after pod, dozens, even hundreds.

00:31:35.340 It feels like a minimum security prison, to be frank.

00:31:41.260 That's how the fire recovery is in Maui.

00:31:45.760 Will that be the case in Los Angeles and the Pacific Palisades, too?

00:31:50.760 I guess we'll find out.

00:31:52.100 What do you think?

00:32:01.520 Are you shocked by how little has been done to rebuild Maui?

00:32:05.740 Do you think the same thing will happen to Los Angeles?

00:32:08.600 If you value the work we did, please go to thetruthaboutthefires.com and chip in to help us cover the cost of our economy class airfare to Maui.

00:32:18.320 It sounds like a gorgeous vacation, but we were only there for a day and a half.

00:32:22.460 We stayed in a low-budget Airbnb, working and talking to people in that devastated town.

00:32:28.340 I hope you found our report interesting.

00:32:30.180 I have not seen that FEMA camp reported anywhere else.

00:32:34.540 If you value our journalism, please take a moment to chip in.

00:32:38.220 That's our show for today.

00:32:39.780 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.

00:32:48.320 We'll see you next time.

Rebel News Podcast - February 11, 2025

EZRA LEVANT ｜ EXCLUSIVE： Democrats ABANDONED Maui residents, few houses rebuilt

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