A year and a half ago, a wildfire tore through the town of Lahaina, killing more than 100 people and burning hundreds of homes. So how is the reconstruction going? It s February 10th, and this is the Ezra LeVance Show.
00:02:57.720Well, we went to Maui and we were shocked.
00:02:59.720The vast majority of homes that were burnt have not been rebuilt at all.
00:03:05.220In fact, the lots are just covered with a gray gravel.
00:03:09.000No signs of reconstruction whatsoever in more than 90% of the cases.
00:03:14.520There are signs of construction, though, high on a hill.
00:03:18.560FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is building a kind of internment camp.
00:03:24.300No bars or locks on the door, but tiny homes where the fire survivors have to live far away in terrible conditions.
00:03:33.280We went to Maui, talked to the locals, and we're bringing you footage that I don't think has been seen by anyone else.
00:03:40.720To 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.
00:03:56.360I'm standing in Lahaina, Maui, one of the most beautiful places in the world, but I'm not here for a vacation.
00:04:01.880I'm here for a 24-hour news visit with our videographer, Lincoln Jay.
00:04:06.920We 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.
00:04:16.620It was like a firestorm, literally, a tornado of fire.
00:04:20.520It killed more than 100 people and wounded many dozens more.
00:04:24.820The 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.
00:04:36.680People rushed to get out, panicked, abandoned their vehicles, thereby causing a form of roadblock.
00:04:43.040The same thing happened in the wildfires in Los Angeles, by the way.
00:04:46.440We're here a year and a half after the fire because we want to have a cautionary tale for Los Angeles.
00:04:53.420Los 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.
00:05:04.740The devastation on a physical scale was larger.
00:05:09.340We 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.
00:05:20.400You have emergency powers just like I do, and I'm exercising my emergency powers.
00:06:10.360Talking to some locals, there's no hope in sight.
00:06:13.640There's no timeline by which this city will be revived.
00:06:17.440And so all sorts of schemes and plans are creeping in.
00:06:21.020The Democrat governor has said he doesn't want there to be residences like there were before.
00:06:26.740In some areas, he wants wetlands back.
00:06:29.560So he wants an environmental replacement for people.
00:06:33.280Because of the fire, which was a first crisis, there's now a second crisis.
00:06:39.480The crisis of politics, the crisis of red tape, of people not getting permits, and people just abandoning the area.
00:06:46.880And so the vultures come in, whether it's a political vulture like the governor or a real estate developer vulture, I don't know.
00:06:53.880But 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.
00:07:06.080This is a cautionary tale for Los Angeles and for Canada, too.
00:07:12.000There's a third fire I'd like to talk about, the wildfires in Jasper, Alberta, Canada.
00:07:17.500And 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.
00:07:29.860Because 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.
00:07:42.980So 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.
00:07:55.940And again, in all three cases, you have governments who are putting their own political aims ahead of the interests of the local residents.
00:08:05.720In 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.
00:08:15.400And they're refusing, they're insisting on utopian socialist, low-income, multifamily homes.
00:08:21.440It's a bizarre replacement of what Jasper was really like.
00:08:26.260Same thing has been threatened in L.A.
00:08:28.760The Palisades, a very wealthy, beautiful neighborhood, the mayor and her hand-picked recovery czar want instead to have low-income housing.
00:08:39.040And here in Lahaina, I'm not quite sure.
00:08:41.460The 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.
00:08:52.260Donald Trump went to L.A. and cut through the red tape, or at least tried to, in a day.
00:08:56.960I think he should come out here to Democrat Hawaii, too.
00:10:09.400I 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.
00:10:17.680There's a lot of burdens on the survivors, aren't there?
00:10:41.200So I've lost, it feels like you've lost more than just the 100 people that perished.
00:10:47.940The ripple effect afterwards, it's still to this day impacting us.
00:10:53.060Hearts and prayers to those that were lost in our fire, 102 souls that didn't make it out that day.
00:11:00.780Just so thankful for a wonderful, resilient community that we have here that was able to come together and get the cleanup process done.
00:11:11.260Yes, there was a lot of red tape and permitting, and we're still dealing with that.
00:11:16.880Everybody has their own level of recovering that they need to do.
00:11:21.380Some 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.
00:11:30.440A lot of people, you know, were fortunate enough to get their properties cleaned up, and the cleanup process went really well.
00:11:38.200And this memorial, thank you to one of our community members and leaders, Soakai Taufa.
00:11:44.400He came here, and he's the caretaker here pretty much.
00:11:47.520Everybody knows that, and just really thank him for making this possible.
00:11:52.900And he built that teardrop, and he did get help from the community, but a lot of it was out of his own pocket.
00:11:57.900And he was able to put this monument up in memory of those that we lost and the teardrop that represents.
00:12:06.620Was there any way to fight it, or was it just completely overwhelming inferno?
00:12:11.720Typically, because of the rugged terrain of Maui, airdrops are what they typically use.
00:12:17.520The winds that we had, they couldn't get the helicopters off the ground.
00:12:28.760So I don't know how much wind force that is, but it was enormous.
00:12:32.720I've never felt wind like that before.
00:12:34.280Luckily, 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.
00:14:09.180The water is there, but it's being mismanaged.
00:14:12.200You know, it seems like Lahaina was forgotten about for a little while.
00:14:15.740And then all of a sudden, after the L.A. fires, unfortunately, you know, then we started getting more attention back because of the similarities.
00:14:25.820Hopefully, they saw us and what we had gone through, and they got to learn from what we went through because it was similar.
00:14:33.820But, you know, yeah, their area was a lot bigger.
00:14:36.940But as far as the evacuation went, hopefully, the communities knew, like, don't wait for an evacuation.
00:14:44.060You know, you see the fire, you smell the smoke, just, you know, evacuate.
00:20:00.600I'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,
00:20:09.400they've managed to build these tiny homes for people who are obviously sensitive about living here, but they haven't rebuilt actual homes.
00:20:26.500We're amongst some of the tiny homes that are being built for Lahaina.
00:23:50.100It'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.
00:26:18.900You won't see any faces of any people.
00:26:21.000We avoided the tiny homes that were being occupied as much as we could.
00:26:25.200But I think they are sick of being treated like some curiosity, like some problem that has to be moved around or pushed around.
00:26:35.340I 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.
00:26:45.680Do 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?
00:26:53.880Like, do you think that he should pay attention to Lahaina?
00:26:56.320If 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.
00:27:10.680Anything 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.
00:27:19.940So 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.
00:27:40.560So it's been a struggle and we already had a housing crisis on Maui before the fire.
00:27:46.300I definitely hope that we have some leader, whether it's Trump or anyone else out there.
00:27:51.580I just hope that we have leadership that that does care about the victims and that will do things.
00:27:57.720As 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.
00:28:05.460Why can't they be put on the lot while, you know, at least you'd be in your neighborhood.
00:28:10.420You'd have a home on your lot, maybe, you know, put it off to the corner while you build the house.
00:28:15.080I don't know without being political about it.
00:28:17.640I 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.
00:28:32.240We deserve the same treatment that Cal looks like California is getting.
00:28:36.420So hopefully, like we're not just left out of that process that he's doing in California.
00:28:42.740And I know that it's a Democratic state, but then he's a Republican.
00:28:46.160But it seems like the community is coming together, you know, because that's what disasters do.
00:28:51.840I 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.
00:28:59.120He needs to come to Maui because these Democrats, they're taking forever.
00:29:03.860And, you know, I've heard that Trump wants to shake up the FEMA system.
00:29:07.720My experience with FEMA was not ideal.
00:29:16.380So 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.
00:30:27.920Rebel 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.
00:30:34.980And we looked at what was going on at Hanukkah Y Park here, and we volunteered to go to Walmart and buy some stuff ourself.
00:30:42.800And then we thought, well, let's crowdfund.
00:30:44.720So we set up a crowdfund opportunity, and more than $51,000 U.S. was raised for Maui wildfire relief.
00:30:54.060I'm very proud of our Rebel News viewers for doing that.
00:30:57.080And it felt appropriate because going to document a community in the aftermath of a tragedy feels more than voyeuristic.
00:31:06.840It felt like perhaps we were taking some of the dignity from people by talking to them in their hour of vulnerability.
00:31:15.120So giving back to the community by crowdfunding more than $51,000 felt like a way to meet our moral debt to these people.
00:31:26.840But over there is the government's vision of the future.
00:32:01.520Are you shocked by how little has been done to rebuild Maui?
00:32:05.740Do you think the same thing will happen to Los Angeles?
00:32:08.600If 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.
00:32:18.320It sounds like a gorgeous vacation, but we were only there for a day and a half.
00:32:22.460We stayed in a low-budget Airbnb, working and talking to people in that devastated town.
00:32:28.340I hope you found our report interesting.
00:32:30.180I have not seen that FEMA camp reported anywhere else.
00:32:34.540If you value our journalism, please take a moment to chip in.