Federal government’s response to Lahaina fire takes center stage in congressional hearing on Maui today

The Lahaina wildfire burned Sne Patel’s two rental properties, the elementary school his kids attended and the offices of the LahainaTown Action Committee where he’s the president.

So when Patel comes before a congressional panel at the Lahaina Civic Center at 10 a.m. today to talk about the federal government’s response to the fire, he’ll have plenty of perspectives on the ways the disaster impacted the community. 

“We’ll have a spotlight on Maui again, which is great because, you know, a lot of times these things happen out of sight, out of mind,” Patel said Tuesday. “So the fact that they’re able to come here and see that there’s still a lot of work to be done, to be able to properly fund that, is very important.”

Last month, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce, announced the subcommittee would hold a field hearing in Lahaina to look into the federal response to the August 2023 fire that killed at least 102 people and destroyed most of the town.

The hearing will be in the Lahaina Civic Center’s social hall and include two panels of federal and local witnesses. 

According to Maui County, officials expected to appear in person include Chairman Sessions and Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) and Katie Porter (D-Calif.), who are members of the full House Committee on Oversight and Accountability that oversees the subcommittee. Hawai‘i Democratic Reps. Ed Case and Jill Tokuda, whose district includes Maui, also are slated to attend. 

Even in divided Washington, the outpouring of support for Maui after the fires was widespread and bipartisan. Both President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, visited Lahaina in the weeks after the disaster and pledged the federal government’s support.

The same month as the fires, the Republican-led House Committee on Oversight and Accountability announced that it would launch an investigation into the federal government’s response. 

Maui residents were critical of both local and federal government after the fire, questioning why the county hadn’t set off emergency sirens to warn the town, expressing frustration over delivery of aid that they say community members themselves stepped up to provide, and calling for more financial assistance for thousands of displaced families.

Housing was also a major issue as people transitioned from temporary shelters in hotels to long-term housing, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency spending millions on hundreds of direct-lease housing units for displaced people that sat empty for months.

However, federal agencies have also overseen a cleanup of burned properties in both Upcountry and Lahaina that so far has progressed ahead of schedule. They quickly constructed a temporary school after King Kamehameha III Elementary burned down and started work on a 169-unit temporary housing project in West Maui. FEMA said last month that it’s on track to provide about $3 billion toward the recovery. 

“Our community is incredibly grateful for the partnership and work of FEMA, SBA, EPA, USACE, and other federal partners,” Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen, one of five local witnesses for today’s hearing, said in a statement to HJI on Tuesday. “However, continued federal support is absolutely critical to the success of our ongoing recovery efforts, and sharing our successes and challenges will help to ensure survivors of the next inevitable disaster will have a better path forward.”

Lauren Nahme, senior vice president of the Maui Recovery Office for the Hawai‘i Community Foundation, is another witness. The foundation received nearly $200 million in donations to its Maui Strong Fund. But Nahme said it would have been helpful in the early days for the federal government to have shared more data on survivors’ situations — things like family size, economic status, jobs — so the foundation could plan next steps.

“If philanthropy is going to fill in the gaps that the federal government cannot fill, then it would be better for us to hear that sooner rather than later … as opposed to sort of guessing what those things are,” Nahme said Tuesday. “It’s not because they didn’t want to, it’s just that, you know, with privacy and the way that everyone protects data, everyone is hyper-concerned.”

Nahme said “high points” in the federal government’s response included the quick solution to put residents in hotels and the ahead-of-schedule debris removal with cultural monitors, but she said residents also complained about the struggles of applying and proving eligibility for federal aid. 

“My hope is that they get what they need to make every successive disaster … supported by these agencies to be even more responsive, more quickly, more … culturally and locally attuned,” Nahme said. 

Patel, meanwhile, hopes to bring up the concerns of local businesses, some of whom are struggling to pay increasing commercial rent at a time when tourism has dropped.

“That’s what I fear, is them not being able to make it long enough to hold on,” Patel said. 

He also hopes to highlight the problem of underinsured individuals and businesses, some of whom might not have known the coverage they’d need for a disaster and are now facing reinsurance rates that he says are “through the roof.”   

“It’s not like pointing fingers, it’s like look, these are the pain points, take it as you will, but maybe policy can be written differently or different decisions can be made for the next time a crisis happens,” Patel said. 

Nā ʻAikāne o Maui President and CEO Ke‘eaumoku Kapu and Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, the state’s adjutant general, also will testify.

The panel of federal witnesses includes Bob Fenton of FEMA, Col. Eric Swenson of the Army Corps of Engineers, Francisco Sanchez Jr. of the Small Business Administration and Cheree Peterson of the Environmental Protection Agency. 

According to the county, the hearing is open to the public but is not a forum for public testimony. To view the full hearing, visit oversight.house.gov/.