One Maui family who received housing assistance through the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement just arrived back on the Valley Isle after relocating to Pearl City on Oʻahu to stay with relatives following the Aug. 8 fire.
The temporary move to Oʻahu was a hard decision, but Jessica and Jim Davis were fortunate their jobs allowed them to work remotely while providing some stability for their two young children.
"We were there for about five months," Jessica Davis said. "It was definitely challenging. It was a huge uprooting of our life."
Before the Lahaina fire, her parents lived four minutes away and were the primary daytime caregivers for the kids. While the family was on Oʻahu, her parents flew back and forth to continue helping.
"An opportunity popped up about three weeks ago from the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement. Jim put us on a list maybe a month or two ago when they introduced a program. So we got on the list. We were pretty open to anywhere on the island because, again, we work from home so we're fairly flexible. And we got a call one evening from the CEO of CNHA, and they offered us an opportunity and we jumped at it," Jessica Davis told HPR.
She said Kūhiō Lewis spoke with Jim Davis for about an hour about the housing offer. At the time, they didn't know Lewis was the head of CNHA.
"When Jim got off the phone, he's like, 'I just talked to Kūhiō from CNHA, I don't know who that is.' So I googled it and I was like, 'Wow, you actually, you talked to the CEO,'" she said.
Jim Davis said they just wanted to be back in the Maui community, no matter where on the island, rather than watching from afar.
"It's been helpful for the healing process for us to be back here and to be with people going through a similar experience," he said. "I came back one time to inspect the property once the area was cleared by the EPA for hazardous materials. And we salvaged one little concrete frog statue from the garden and everything else we're leaving to the earth to take."
Their home was in the center of Lahaina, right off Front Street. He said the lot is unrecognizable save for the shell of the car they left. Jessica Davis and their kids have not been back to the town.
"I think for the children and my wife, probably wait until a lot of the clearing has been done and then it's a blank canvas, and we can kind of look ahead rather than look at the destruction of the past," Jim Davis told HPR.
The couple said they are grateful to be able to stay in the Hāʻiku area until they rebuild their home in Lahaina.
"We've actually chatted with the landlord extensively, and they just wanted to have a family fill their home that needed it. And they welcomed us to say as long as we need to," Jessica Davis added.
This story aired on The Conversation on Feb. 9, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1. Sophia McCullough adapted this story for the web.
