Have you ever noticed when an emergency or sad event happens most of us are really good at swooping in at the beginning? We make the one phone call. We mail the one greeting card. We send the one flower bouquet.
But then we get busy doing our thing. We still think of and keep our loves in our prayers, but life is busy. Days and weeks pass by, and we realize that we didn’t reach out to them like we intended to. No phone call or event text.
How are they? Whatever happened? What was wrong with them again?
Well, it hit me. Lahaina in Maui. The fires burned August 8, 2023. The question is how are they today, about 8 months later?
Maui Mayor, Richard Bissen, reports that 101 people died; 12,000 people lost everything; 2,000 structures burnt to the ground; 3,000 residents still displaced.
Duane Sparkman, the founder of Treecovery, reports that Lahaina has only up to 1,000 trees out of 25,000 trees prior. He has been marking surviving trees throughout Lahaina town and watering them when rain isn’t in the forecast.
I checked on the precious banyan tree. It’s fighting off a beetle infestation that caused one third of the tree to be cut away. The tree is likened to an immune deficient person.
Now it’s time to treasure the Hawaiian way of life, with a special honor of Lahaina wildfire victims, in the Merrie Monarch Festival this week. They will hula to show their Aloha spirit has not turned to ash. Lahaina will survive after so many hearts have sunk.
God bless Hawaii, and all of us carrying our various crosses. Let’s remember to check in with our dear ones fighting daily battles and catastrophic life tragedies.
Here are some Lahaina Wildfire websites. Aloha 🙏🏻
