How Oregonians can help Maui in wake of catastrophic wildfires

The wildfires that rampaged through Maui began last week, killing more than 100 people and destroying over 2,500 acres on the island, including homes and businesses of the historic town of Lahaina. Ka ‘Aha Lāhui O ‘Olekona Hawaiian Civic Club of Oregon and SW Washington has been taking donations to aid in relief efforts. Currently, they are only accepting gift cards to Safeway, Costco and Target. Leialoha Ka’ula is the executive director of KALOHCC. She joins us to share more on the efforts being made so far and how Oregonians can help.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We start today with the aftermath of the deadliest fire in the U.S. in more than a century. 111 people in Hawaii are now confirmed dead, an estimated 1,000 more are still missing as the grim recovery efforts continue. KALOHCC, the Hawaiian Civic Club of Oregon and Southwest Washington, has been coordinating donation aid in the Northwest. Leialoha Ka’ula is the executive director of the group. She joins us now. Thanks very much for making time for us. I appreciate it.

Leialoha Ka’ula: Yeah, aloha, mahalo for having us.

Miller: What have you been hearing over the last week or so from members of the Hawaiian community in Oregon and Southwest Washington?

Ka’ula: I think the main thing that we’ve been hearing is ‘How do we help? How do we support Maui, being so far away?’ So many of them have families and just unable to feel like we are a part of helping has definitely been the call, that helplessness of being so far away has been a conversation that so many of us have had and this is why KALO has been doing the best that we can to support our community here in Oregon and how we can be that bridge to getting support to Maui.

Miller: It seems like part of the issue here is the physical distance, being 2,500 miles away, being a part of a Hawaiian diaspora and feeling that, those miles . . . wishing you could actually be there physically.

Ka’ula: Oh, 100%. That distance of being away is truly . . . I think that’s something that we, all of us who live here, and especially living in the diaspora, that is our greatest fear of being here, or worry, and not being able to get home as fast as we need to. And so that’s definitely not just this situation, but this is an example of how many of us living here on the continent feel every day about being home.

Miller: And in this case, I imagine there’s an extra wrinkle because going home is the last thing right now that recovery and relief efforts need. They don’t need more people there.

Ka’ula: Yes, even for me considering, like, the first thing was like, how do we get volunteers? Can we get volunteers there? And really on the ground, there is a lot of help, for those who are from Maui, whose family is feeling the pain of this disaster. Those are the ones that we want to help and make sure that they get home to embrace their families. We’ve had one of our members who jumped on a plane this morning to finally get her home. Her home in Lahaina is gone, her family home, and she didn’t have word from her family for two days. And so for her, the reason for going home is to embrace and make sure to hug them and to embrace them and to know that they are here and just to ease that worry. But yeah, we see a lot of our community members are struggling with that.

Miller: Well, it’s striking when you’re talking about not being able to get in touch with family. How much have you heard that? I mean, with so many people who’ve lost homes, with so much destruction, what are the challenges that Hawaiian natives or other residents of Hawaii who live in the Northwest - what have they encountered in trying to get in touch with family or friends?

Ka’ula: A lot of what you folks have heard and seen, that’s the truth, that some of them still have not heard from their families. And so it’s a matter of the lack of resources that we have in the islands. And so a lot of our families, they just don’t have any connection. And so the conversations we’re just having with our community here are many of them who haven’t been able to find their families, they have gone home in hopes to help. But right now, we’re also connected with our Maui Fire Department families there. And what has happened in Lahaina is definitely not something that we have ever seen. And so to have to go through all of that and find the families doesn’t sit right with anybody, right? And so the families here, that pain of not knowing. We also feel for a lot of the families who aren’t able to make it back to Maui, that pain of not even being able to be there, is also something that’s hitting so many of them. But those moments of silence and even if it was for some of them, it was just a few hours, felt like days, it felt like months, like not knowing anything. And all you see is what’s on the news and it’s terrifying. It was absolutely terrifying for them.

Miller: On Instagram, you put out kāhea for donations. What does that mean?

Ka’ula: Yeah, a kāhea. So you know the simple translation is a call. But in Hawaii, when we say kāhea, it’s a call to support, it’s a call for help. It is, this is the need. And so in Hawaii, when we kāhea, it’s to make this announcement, an announcement of saying let us band together. This is what we need to do. And in so many of our protocols we have kāhea, but that is what it is. So the kāhea we put out is not just to say, hey, this is what we need. It’s also everything that wraps around our culture, right? We need prayers, we need protocol. And of course, we need the physical support and everything else that we put out. So that is what kāhea means, and let me tell you our community answered that kāhea tenfold. The community of Oregon, the state of Oregon, I’ll try not to be emotional, but has been incredible for Maui, so. . .

Miller: For people who haven’t seen the videos you’ve put on Instagram, that looks like a full warehouse. Can you give us a sense for what’s come in, the physical things people have donated?

Ka’ula: Yeah. Thousands of things have come in but we were very, very selective on our list of what we were calling for just because we were in communication with our families in Hawaii. And many of us, from day one, they were asking like, what can we donate? And KALO took the week - we were like, hey, let’s wait to see. Let’s hear from Maui first. And so, the kāhea of the support for our keiki, for our children, right? Wipes, diapers, food for them, clothes for them. The kāhea, the biggest call was for pillows and blankets and bedding and mattresses and cots and just a space for all of our families who have been displaced from their homes, a place for them to simply just sleep. That was the big kāhea, that was the big need. And so that was our first call. And as we went on.

Then it was a matter of like, we need cleaning supplies, we need hygiene supplies, we need new gas cans because there was none in Maui, none in Hawaii, to support the need to refuel the cars that were taking the donations and taking the much-needed supplies to all of our families in Lahaina and also in the other parts of Maui that also had had fires. So that was our big call. So, we’re fortunate that, I also have a school, I have a hālau here and so we were able to house a lot of the stuff that we got in in the hālau as we repacked everything, counted everything, so that we could get it back to Maui. But I can’t even begin to tell you the numbers. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of cases of diapers and wipes have come in and are making their way to Maui.

Miller: What’s the time frame now, in terms of being able to actually get those supplies to Maui?

Ka’ula: So, our first goal, our first shipment, we wanted to send a big shipment out either today or tomorrow. Unfortunately, they have a storm coming in. So we had to put on a pause. So we’re getting our things out next week, Monday and Tuesday. So next week is a heavy week for the physical donations to go out. And of course, with cargo shipping, many people just thought you could just go to the airport and drop it off. Unfortunately, that is not the case. So, KALO took on the kuleana, or the responsibility to become a certified shipper here in Oregon or in the state so that we can work with the cargo companies to get them home and to get them on pallets and to send big bulks of items.

And we’re very fortunate to connect with Hawaii Airlines and Alaska Airlines as well as Aloha Cargo, to partner with those organizations to get these items to Hawaii. But the biggest thing that we wanna express to our community, who’s trying to get things home, is that you have to have someone on the other end, you have to have someone on the receiving end. And that was our biggest concern, was to make sure that we had someone on the receiving end to get these items to where they needed to go.

Miller: What are you asking for right now? I mean, what can Northwesterners do to help now?

Ka’ula: That’s a question we get every day, right? And so the immediate need for Maui is definitely being answered and we cannot say mahalo enough, but really this is this process and what we’re going through right now, it’s long term, right? We need to get our families back into Lahaina. We need the support of our community to remind the many, many, many developers who are trying to take over Lahaina that those are family’s lands and the families need support. So there are many ways that you can support through programs like ‘Āina Momona. You can also support through the Hawaii Community Foundation. They’re not only taking in funding to support them with the immediate needs now, they’re providing legal advice for many of the families. They’re helping them get through their insurance policies, they’re helping them to figure out ways to rebuild their homes. They’re helping them get into Airbnbs, getting to hotels, getting into other places. So those organizations, that’s how we can truly help.

All of us want to send things home and it’s so greatly appreciated. But this is the long term and now KALO, we’re shifting to how do we support them in the long term? Here in the Pacific Northwest, we just need you guys to hold on. September 8th, we are holding a benefit concert right here, with Hawaii’s artists coming up to support this benefit concert so that all of Oregon. . .  we’re putting out that kāhea to the folks again to partner with us. More information on the benefit concert will be coming. This weekend in Hawaii, they’re going to be doing multiple online streaming benefit concerts that also have ways that you can support financially. And that’s truly the biggest way that we can support Maui right now.

Miller: This fire has shined a really bright light on the effects of colonialism and sugar plantations in Hawaii and the longstanding and current tensions between a highly tourism-based economy and the lives and needs of both native Hawaiians and and other residents of Hawaii. What are your hopes for what rebuilding might look like and what are your fears?

Ka’ula: I’ll start with the fear. The fear is that our state continues to develop Maui in the worst possible ways that we have already seen. We have seen the water being, Lahaina is the first capital of Hawaii, right? In our monarch, that is Lahaina, is home to our chiefs, our ali’i, and so Maui and Lahaina and all of Maui is so dear to all of us in Hawaii. So the fear is that our state will not stand by their words. However, the hope is that Hawaii has been rising and our people, our communities, the world, you’re right, there’s a light, the light has truly been shining on Hawaii. And so many people have reached out to educate themselves and to really gain the knowledge of the history of Hawaii. And our hope is that when we get to rebuild, not when we . . .when we rebuild Maui and when we rebuild Lahaina, that our culture gets to thrive, our people get to thrive in that restructuring and that rebuilding of Hawaii. So that when Lahaina comes to life again and the people see Lahaina, they see the beauty of what is Hawaii as well.

Miller: Leialoha Ka’ula, thank you very much for joining us today.

Ka’ula: Oh, mahalo to you for having me.

Miller: Leialoha Ka’ula is the executive director of KALOHCC. That is the Hawaiian Civic Club of Oregon and Southwest Washington, and they are coordinating a lot of relief efforts for Hawaii right now after the devastating wildfires there.

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