On final approach into Lahaina’s windswept airstrip at Kapalua, I configured the tiny airplane I was flying for landing. Gusts buffeted the plane, kicking its wings up and down, hitting me with updrafts and then with strong downdrafts. The high winds that had played such an important role in the wildfires that had decimated Maui just three days earlier had abated, but not enough.
I could see a ravine snaking in front of the runway threshold; I knew that terrain feature would do weird things to the wind just as I was in the most critical phase of flight, low to the ground, at low speed, closing with the runway.
I spotted the windsock, standing straight out, veering this way and that in violent oscillations. “Wind check?” I asked the Kapalua tower controller over the radio, my voice surprisingly calm.
“090 at 22, gusting 29.”
That meant the wind was blowing from 090 degrees on the compass, from due east, at 22 knots, gusting to 29 knots, 25 to 33 miles per hour. Since the runway was oriented on a nearly north-south axis, the wind was blowing across it at a 70-degree angle. This meant that I faced a crosswind of 24 to 31 mph, much more than the little four-seat Cessna could handle. Gusty winds like this — and inattention or poor judgment or ignorance or bad luck — have flipped over tiny airplanes; caused them to run off runways; crumpled propellers; it's not a good list. I was not there to become my own emergency. I was not there to divert firefighters and EMTs away from the very people I was there to help.
I opened the throttle to climb: I couldn’t land in those winds. I crabbed the airplane into the wind as I climbed, then turned west towards the shoreline, then south towards the gray and white ashes of Lahaina, where a few plumes of smoke still smoldered.
Elsewhere on the island, fires were still being fought; helicopter pilots I knew were working from dawn to after dark, dumping bucket after bucket to try to put them out. First responders on the ground were overwhelmed with burn victims and with searching for the missing. All of us, across the state, were still stunned by what had happened: the tragedy whose magnitude we were still learning.
Flying at 900 feet over the beach, I could see the ocean below me: a violent mass of churning whitecaps. I called the tower on the radio as I came back for another attempt to land. He cleared me to land again, adding, “I think you can make it this time, winds are backing to 050.”
That would mean much less crosswind, and sure enough, as I straightened out on the final approach course, I was not crabbing as aggressively to hold my course. I neared the ravine again and got another wind check: “060 at 26, gusts 30.”
That was right at the limit of what the plane could handle, a little beyond it in the gusts. I watched the runway, keeping my landing point rock steady. That ravine kicked me up in a bit of rolling turbulence and then kicked me down, but I was ready for it. I leveled out over the runway, the nose straight along the centerline, and pulled back into the landing flare. I felt the wheels touch.
The firefighters came rushing out to the plane as I taxied into a parking spot, smiling with relief, and congratulating me on making it. In minutes my big load of supplies was piled onto carts and disappearing into the firehouse to be distributed among the survivors. Needing a moment to clear my head before taking off to fly home and load up and do it again, I went into the firehouse to rest in the shade. I struck up a conversation with a couple of the firefighters, and one of them remarked, his offhand manner belying the urgency in his eyes, that he'd been “pretty worried when I saw you come in and not land at first.”
That hadn't occurred to me in the moment that I'd made that decision as a pilot, that if I couldn't land, they would spend another day without critical burn cream and food. Maybe even more than seeing the smoke and ashes of Lahaina, that brought home to me how important this mission really was.
On Aug. 8, 2023, wildfires destroyed the historic town of Lahaina, home to 13,000 people. We learned later that this was one of the deadliest fires in the last century of U.S. history, leaving 102 people killed, many injured, and over 5,000 without homes.
The wildfires resulted from a “perfect storm” of conditions. Dry, non-native grasses have run rampant across the slopes of Maui and other islands in recent decades; this increase in fuel, combined with drought and dwindling water availability for fire-fighting, has greatly increased the state's susceptibility to wildfires. Devastatingly, weather patterns in the first week of August created the perfect recipe for extreme winds across Hawaiʻi. A strong high-pressure system lay to the north of the Islands, while Hurricane Dora, maintaining Category 4 strength longer than any Pacific hurricane in 50 years, lay to the south. The pressure differential between the high to the north and the deep low of the hurricane, combined with mountainous terrain, generated winds over 80 mph. Add to this an unusual lack of humidity in the air, and fires sparked across Oʻahu, Big Island, and Maui. While the fires on Oʻahu and Big Island were contained, the ones on Maui would go on to make national news. The extreme winds downed power poles, which ignited brush fires in the grasses, which spread uncontrollably, with tragic consequences.
Three days later, as I took off from Big Island in a tiny Cessna, loaded to its max weight with burn cream, bandages, food, and other emergency supplies, I remembered the last time I had been in Lahaina. I remembered strolling the waterfront, taking in the historic wooden buildings, some of them dating from the days of whaling. Front Street had been thronged with visitors from all over the world, stopping at any number of the eclectic storefronts, buying everything from fine art sculpture to vintage posters to key chains. Restaurants, bars, and ice cream parlors beckoned tourists and residents alike. Local surfers were washing down their boards at the waterfront park; fishermen were cleaning their catch; and dive boat captains were tidying up their gear in the harbor. Lahaina's famous banyan tree was alive with the twittering of myna birds. Just offshore, a few sailboats rode at anchor, and off in the west the sun was setting in a glory of gold. I remembered Lahaina as a unique and vibrant place, full of life and joy.
I knew, of course, that it was gone. That was why I was making this flight. But the enormity of what that meant — the terror the residents must have felt as they fled for their lives, and of the utter and complete devastation wrought by the fire — did not sink in until I was skirting the temporarily restricted airspace over Lahaina. Out my right window, I saw a sight I hope never to see again: of the homes and businesses of my fellow Hawaiʻi residents reduced to rubble. I was seeing in person something I had only before seen on TV, a town that looked like it had been bombed. I had a physical reaction to it, my heart beating faster, my breath getting shallower, a tightness in my chest and a blurry wetness in my eyes. I had to look away, to take a deep breath, and concentrate on what I was doing. I couldn't afford to let emotion get in the way of this mission. Flying a small plane in the winds and turbulence I was experiencing is challenging enough without losing concentration. And I was a relatively low-time pilot. I hadn't yet earned my commercial certificate and this was by far the most demanding flying I had ever done.
All the roads into Lahaina were closed and blocked at this point, and would remain that way for almost two weeks. So the only way people could get the provisions they needed to survive was by air lift, or by small boats landing on the beaches in the surf. The airstrip at Lahaina is privately owned, and is normally off-limits to aircraft like the one I was flying. This is not necessarily a bad thing: it is perhaps the most challenging runway in the state; the instructor who first taught me to fly has described it as “subject to sustained winds well over 20 knots with low-level crossing wind shear and mountain lee side turbulence.” It is not an airstrip for cavalier or inexperienced pilots.
But a small group of pilots across Hawaiʻi had managed to obtain permission for this relief mission, and I was one of the first to take off for Lahaina. I knew that what we were doing was important, but it wasn’t until I met the firefighters on the ground that I understood just how vital.
As we talked in the firehouse, I asked if what I had brought — what the people at home on Big Island were donating — was what was most needed. I learned that drinking water was in short supply, which was going to be a tough one for a small plane with a small payload: water is heavy. But in the days that followed, I would fly several missions with crates of water. And I would fly first aid supplies, fresh vegetables, canned and dried foods, bedding, tents, toothpaste, soap, baby wipes, diapers, toilet paper, and even Portuguese sweet bread. The group of pilots and donors I was part of on Big Island would plead with the Department of Health for five days before we were granted permission to fly a load of insulin to diabetics in critical condition, who had been without this life-saving medicine ever since the fires. I think that flight is the one I am most proud of, knowing that we truly saved lives that day.
Over the next two weeks, I flew something close to 20 missions, sometimes making three flights a day. In that short time I went from being a fairly new pilot, in training for a commercial certificate, to living the life of a cargo pilot, with a packed schedule and an urgency to my flying that had never existed before. My fellow pilots from Big Island, from Oʻahu, and from Kahului on Maui combined to fly many more. Together we transported tens of thousands of pounds of donated supplies. The tour operators pitched in, too, sending their helicopters and larger airplanes across the channel to Maui full of drinking water and other equipment. People talk about the aloha spirit, and in all the time I've lived in Hawaiʻi, never have I seen it so fully embodied than in the little community of aviators, putting their lives entirely on pause while they volunteered in those first days after the fires.
Eventually FEMA and other disaster relief organizations stepped in, and eventually the roads were cleared and reopened. The rebuilding process has been slow but it is moving forward. But in those early days, it was ordinary citizens — boaters, pilots, and residents organizing, donating, and loading — who rose to meet the tragedy. Our ʻohana came together in a way I was honored to be a part of. Today whenever I fly past Lahaina, I remember that time both with great sadness, and with awe at how our resilient and caring community responded.
Special thanks to Dana Asis, who organized the Big Island pilots' relief effort, and to the selfless pilots, boaters, airplane owners, volunteers, and donors from all around Hawaiʻi (too numerous to name!) who came together to help out at that critical time.
