This week, HPR brings you a series of stories from survivors of the Aug. 8, 2023, wildfire on Maui. HPR contributor Kuʻuwehi Hiraishi revisits a boat captain who has been living away from his wife and two young children for the past year.
Lahaina boat captain Keao Shaw lives just two minutes south of Lahaina Harbor. His property has been cleared, scraped and gravel has been put down.
He will have a surveyor come out in a few weeks so he can redesign and eventually put down a new home.
"It’s incredible how much work they’ve done all of Lahaina. How much they’ve cleaned up. Day and night these guys have been working pretty much to get this place cleaned up. It’s incredible," Shaw said.
When the hurricane-fueled winds hit Lahaina last August, Shaw decided to leave his home to grab a couple of chainsaws and help neighbors clear fallen trees.
He told HPR what he saw a few days after the fire.
"By the time I came back, I couldn’t even get back to the house," he said last August. "My family and kids were with me and we had just the shirts on our back. And the houses are gone. Everything is leveled."
Shaw went to the harbor to check on one of his boats, but he couldn’t see it because it had sunk to the bottom. He did see what remained of his house.
"My house is about 5 inches of ash. Anything that wasn’t steel is completely gone. Anything that you think, ‘Oh that could have survived.’ Everything is gone, gone, gone. Ash," he said.
Shaw has been separated from his family for the last year. His wife, ‘Iwa, and his two young children, 6-year-old Nāhiku and 4-year-old ʻOlina, relocated to Oʻahu because their schools were lost in the fire. Shaw said they’ll all be back for good this summer.
"For the new school year, our daughter got into the preschool at Kamehameha III, and so that was really good," he said.
"And that’s going to be a challenge is just finding preschools cause ... we lost five or six preschools. My son, he’s going to be starting first grade this year. He’s excited about that. The school looks really great too. Better than I expected."
Shaw and ‘Iwa run a small charter boat business out of Lahaina called Makai Adventures and a tour company called Kainani Sails. However, business has been slow.
"One of my boats goes out maybe, it’s been out maybe five times a month. The other boat maybe 10 to 15. You know Fourth of July just came around and it should’ve been busy-busy out every day," Shaw said. "I don’t know if it’s just like a different tourist that’s here or what’s going on but it’s definitely slower than it usually is."
He now has about half the employees, and one of his former employees actually started a charter business on Hawaiʻi Island.
"I know it’s going to come back, and so I’m not super concerned about work. Work is going to be there when it gets there. I’m excited about rebuilding the house. I want to make it bigger, not bigger, just better. Just better than it was," he said.
"Some things could have been done better like central AC and proper solar because Lahaina is hot."
