When Lahaina resident Mikey Burke thinks about what coming home means to her, she thinks about both the house she lost in the wildfire and her community.
“I think coming home for me is multilayered. I know for myself that I will never be truly home until I'm standing in my house, my boys are safe in the home that we tried to provide for them,” she said, her voice filled with emotion.
“So that's one layer, but that layer has to be built on feeling at home in this town, in this community, in the spaces that we inhabit. And feeling at home in this town comes from the relationships that I have with people, and those relationships are solidified and nurtured and matured during instances where we can be together, and we've lost a lot of those instances after the fire. And so, coming home to the community is just being able to gather in the ways that we used to,” she continued.
Burke, her husband and sons lived in one of Lahaina's newer neighborhoods, where many homes have already been rebuilt.
“A lot of my neighbors started rebuilding as soon as they could get their permits. And so it's not —technically, it's not a sad street, but I personally could count on both hands the number of times that I've gone up my own street in the last three years,” Burke told HPR. “But I knew I had to face it soon because we had gotten our permit and we were trying to figure out how we were going to do this. We don't have enough money to hire a contractor and just let them build the house, so we're owner-building it, and we're hoping that savings will give us just enough of a cushion to be able to build the house that we need. But that's come with its own challenges. This is our first rodeo. This is not our business, we've had to learn the process.”
Healing around the rebuilding process began unexpectedly for Burke. Months ago, concrete workers came to lay the foundation of their home and she planned to stop by just briefly.
“The truck starts pouring the concrete, and all of a sudden they're doing this beautiful dance, and they they're not even really talking to each other, but they know who's gonna go where, who's gonna pick up what tool,” she described. “I mean, it was beautiful to watch, and I ended up staying and watching the entire process, and I could feel through the day as they were laying the slab, I could feel the grief — looking at that space — like the sadness was starting to lift, and it was starting to be filled with hope for the first time."
"And so, this foundation that they laid has so much meaning now. You know, it's our physical foundation to the house, but it was, I think, for me, my first acknowledgement that we're actually going to rebuild, because everything was theoretical, right? 'Yeah, we're going to rebuild.' Laying that down was the first step for me.”
Progress on their home rebuild has stalled since then as they wait for lumber and scrape together money for construction. She said they continue to pay rent on a temporary house and mortgage on their burned home. They also didn't get a full insurance payout. Despite all the obstacles, there are sparks of hope for the future.
“Our neighbors stopped, got out of their cars, gave us hugs, and were excited that we were starting, and talking about, you know, how nice it's going to be when everybody's home and we're all on our front lawns again, like we used to. And so that part was healing as well,” Burke said.
