Home of longtime Lahaina family is first to finish rebuilding after being destroyed in last year’s fire

LAHAINA — Mau Ah Hee can’t even remember what he did for Thanksgiving last year after the August 2023 wildfire burned down his home and much of Lahaina town.

But he likely won’t forget this year’s celebration, surrounded by loved ones in his family’s newly built home that is the first to be completed in the Lahaina burn zone.

“It’s going to be a special Thanksgiving. It ain’t going to be just us,” said Ah Hee, a 36-year-old Maui County lifeguard. “It’s probably going to be big. We’re going to have family and friends coming over for Thanksgiving. So, I’m excited about that.”

The Ah Hees applied for their permit on May 7, soon after the county cleanup of their area was complete. They passed the daunting permit process on June 24, started building on July 6, and their final inspection is set for Friday when they are expected to be presented with their certificate of occupancy. Their appliances are in and their furniture is scheduled to arrive on Thursday.

“Oh my gosh, it is surreal,” Ariel Ah Hee, a 31-year-old nurse for Minit Medical, said on Monday night. “I had no idea that we were gonna be the first people in a house, but this is unbelievable. We plan to move in (this) weekend.”

More than a year after the Upcountry and Lahaina fires, debris removal from all residential properties has been completed while commercial debris removal was 91% finished as of Monday, according to the Maui County recovery dashboard. In Lahaina, 291 building permits have been submitted and 134 have been issued. Work has been finished on one of those permits, which was for a demolition, according to the county.

That makes the Ah Hees’ home officially the first to be completed through the expedited permitting process, according to Mike Renner, the director of development recovery services for 4LEAF, which was hired by Maui County to help fire survivors with the permitting process. 

Originally built five years ago, the floor plan for the Ah Hees’ home has stayed at 1,200 square feet but changed from two bedrooms and one bathroom to three bedrooms and two bathrooms.

Since the wildfire on Aug. 8, 2023, the Ah Hee family of four — dad Mau, mom Ariel and their two young boys — has moved “six or seven times” and has settled in to a current routine of living some of the time apart. Mau Ah Hee is assigned to the lifeguard tower at Hanakaʻōʻō (Canoe) Beach Park and Ariel Ah Hee moves to different Minit Medical locations, but usually does her shifts at the Kahului location.

Mau Ah Hee currently lives some of the time with his parents near the Lahaina Civic Center but often joins his wife and their children in a tiny bedroom of her parents’ Pāʻia home. Their kids, 6-year-old Manaiakalani and 3-year-old Kaiakea, attend school in Central Maui and will finish the 2024-25 academic year at their current campuses.

The Ah Hees are a respected longtime family in West Maui. Mau’s father, Lahaina-born waterman and Vietnam veteran Abraham “Snake” Ah Hee, was one of the original crew members on the voyaging canoe Hōkūleʻa in the 1970s, and he named his son after Micronesian master navigator Mau Piailug. Snake and Myrna Ah Hee’s neighborhood was spared, but many family members lost their homes.

Mau Ah Hee is a 2006 alum of Lahainaluna High School, and Ariel Ah Hee is a 2011 King Kekaulike High School graduate. They met in 2015.

Rebuilding their home was a community effort, with family and friends pitching in to help with painting, caulking and other tasks. The Ah Hees hope to be an inspiration to others who are in the rebuilding process.

“I would have never thought we could have built a home in essentially four months,” Ariel Ah Hee said. “I can’t believe it, but we worked really hard. We went every single day. When we were off of work, we were there. We went before work. We went after work.”

Their contractor Derrick Montalvo “was there every single day. I literally can’t think of one day that I didn’t see him at our property,” she added.

“Us getting this thing done this quick, this proves what I’ve been saying all along: If we all work together, we can get the houses built,” Montalvo said. “You can see on people’s faces when they stop by over here, you can see that it kind of gives everybody a little bit of hope. This can be done.”

Renner has been impressed with the speed of the rebuilding process in Lahaina.

“It’s been amazingly fast,” he said. “Part of our ability to assist the county and expedite these permits in the way we have been is the partnership with the county and their openness in our weekly meetings and their drive to also get people back in their homes immediately.”

Renner’s organization has helped out with the regulatory work in the aftermath of major wildfires across the country since 2017.

“What we do is we just augment the county’s staff to be able to solely focus just on the fire rebuild area and that allows us to expedite the process,” Renner explained. “From a permit issuance plan review, building inspection, we will take care of the project all the way through final completion.”

Renner said there are a few more homes on Komo Mai Street that will follow the Ah Hees soon. Residents of Komo Mai Street were among the first to receive rebuilding permits thanks to neighborhood’s newer infrastructure and location, which is on the more mauka side of the burn zone where rebuilding is less complicated than along the shoreline.

“This process has been shockingly fast,” Renner said. “This has to do a lot with the speed that the Army Corps of Engineers, how quickly they were able to perform the cleanup and the clearance of the properties. That’s what has allowed the permitting process to be so quick.”

Renner said the milestone of the first home being completed is of “huge significance, not only from just getting something finished standpoint, but from an emotional standpoint of getting that first home back, getting people back in their homes, it’s giant. … It will be emotionally gratifying to get people who were long-term residents back in their homes.” 

According to Renner, a single-family dwelling takes 13 to 15 inspections from foundation to the final checks.

The Ah Hee boys are looking forward to returning to their home.

“They’re excited to have a room and our older son is so excited to paint, decorate a room,” Ariel Ah Hee said. “That’s something really exciting for them. They miss our street. They miss riding their bikes. They miss going on walks. All those things that they have missed. And then we are finally moving back into the home so we can be closer together. The kids are gonna have a lot more fun.”