‘Just being home is a gift:’ 2 Lahaina families enjoy holidays in neighborhood rebuilding after fire

All Kari Alexander has in the living room of her newly rebuilt home in Lahaina are three beach chairs and a Christmas tree.

But this holiday season, 16 months after her family lost their home in the August 2023 wildfire, it is more than enough.

“I can’t tell you how happy we are,” Alexander said Tuesday as she prepared to celebrate Christmas with her husband and two children who are home from college. 

The Alexanders were the first in Maui County to receive their rebuilding permits after the fire, and they’re the second family in Lahaina to complete their home, Maui County confirmed.

Down the road, the Ah Hee family in November became the first in Lahaina to finish rebuilding their home. 

Both live in the Komo Mai Street neighborhood, one of the earliest to take shape after the wildfire that destroyed more than 2,200 structures and killed at least 102 people. Residents say it was a close-knit community of local families who were classmates at Lahainaluna High School or members of the same church. And they say watching the reconstruction and return of the community, albeit slowly, is a hopeful sign. 

In Lahaina, 531 total building permit applications have been submitted, with 189 permits issued so far, according to the Maui County recovery dashboard. Two permits have completed construction. Komo Mai Street has the advantage of being a newer-build neighborhood with underground utilities and a mauka location that comes with less complicated permitting than shoreline areas.

The clock was ticking for the Alexanders to finish their home — the lease on their Kahoma Village rental was set to expire Jan. 31, and they weren’t sure where they would go if their home wasn’t rebuilt by then.

Kari Alexander said they broke ground on their property on June 1 and their home was finished by Nov. 29, which she said was a credit to their contractor, Thad Henry Design, and her husband Rich, who also builds homes for a living. She said they waited weeks for Hawaiian Electric to restore power to their home so they could move back in.

“I told my children, let’s go put our Christmas tree up over there and manifest positiveness,” she said. “My daughter was like, ‘well, there’s no lights on,’ and I said, ‘well, pretend there’s lights on it.’” 

On Friday, they got a Christmas miracle when Hawaiian Electric restored their power. Mike Renner and Peter Lim of 4LEAF, the company that Maui County has contracted to expedite building permits in the burn zone, had been waiting to issue the Alexanders a certificate of occupancy and hurried it over that same day.

The family strung up Christmas lights around the house on Saturday and spent the first night in their home on Sunday. Alexander said the feeling of being back is “surreal” after months of hard work and determination. Her 19-year-old twins, who graduated from Lahainaluna months before the fire, now have a sense of security and a home to come back to when they’re on break from Southwestern Oregon Community College. 

The Alexanders will be doing a low-key Christmas celebration this year, but with presents for the kids.

“Just being in the house is a gift,” she said. “We are in the house and we can actually start moving forward … knowing that our forever home is rebuilt again.” 

Watching the homes in the neighborhood take shape is also uplifting for Kim Ball, who calls Komo Mai “the best street in Lahaina.” He knows who coaches swimming and who fixes boats. He recognizes the all-star high school athletes. He remembers some of the homeowners, including Mau Ah Hee, because they went to Lahainaluna with his three sons, who are all in their 30s now.

Seeing his neighbors now reminds him of what they’ve missed out on over the past year. He recently ran into his neighbor at Launiupoko Beach Park. At the time of the fire, his neighbor’s son was just a toddler. Now, he’s walking. 

“I don’t think anybody really wants to talk about it,” Ball said of what they lost in the fire. “If anything, we talk about encouraging to rebuild, but not dwelling on what we had in the past because we can’t replace that.”

He and his wife’s home is under construction and on track to be ready by June. They added a Bible above the front door — their old home contained a Bible in the corner of a perimeter wall that didn’t burn, “so figure we better cover our rebuilt home too,” Ball said. He’s excited to see pads being poured and frameworks going up around the neighborhood.

“I was as thrilled as if we moved into our own house when the Ah Hees got their (certificate) and moved in,” said Ball, the owner of Hi-Tech Surf Sports.

Ball knows of families who have already bought a home elsewhere because they assumed the rebuild would take several years. But he’s hopeful enough neighbors will come back someday that they’ll once again be packed with young families wandering the streets on Halloween and other holidays.

For some residents, the Komo Mai Street neighborhood was their first shot at homeownership. 

Shaina Forsyth, who was born and raised in Lahaina, never thought she’d be able to own a home on Maui until she landed one in a lottery in 2017. Her home soon became a gathering place for loved ones. She had roommates; pet birds, a dog and a cat; and a garden full of lemons, carrots, radishes, lettuce, strawberries and a watermelon vine. Forsyth also had a grapefruit tree that she lugged around in a pot for years.

“I finally planted it in the ground when I moved into the house, like hey, this is my home. I’m going to put down roots,” Forsyth said. “It had never made fruit in the pot, but it made fruit the first year being in the ground.”

Forsyth said she’s been running on adrenaline since she spotted dark black smoke and evacuated with her pets on the afternoon of Aug. 8, 2023. She poured herself into her job at the Montage Kapalua Bay and the mountains of paperwork to get her insurance figured out and building permits submitted. 

“I’ve just been working a lot, maybe an avoidance tactic, but I do think it’s kind of hitting me more,” she said. “I’ve been running on adrenaline and feeling a little burnt out now and maybe reflecting more on everything that’s happened.”

Forsyth is currently renting a condo in Nāpili while she rebuilds her home and expects to be finished around April. She’s taking extra precautions this time around — putting in a more fire-resistant metal roof and investing in cement board siding instead of wood, because “I don’t want to ever have to go through this again.”

She said she thinks about moving into her new house all the time: “It’s kind of like my North Star.”

Nick Bennett also is eager to get back to the neighborhood. Born and raised in Lahaina, he never thought he’d own a home on Maui. So when he, his wife and their three young kids were chosen in a lottery four years ago for an affordable Habitat for Humanity home, it was “the most happy miracle day ever.” 

Komo Mai Street was “the best neighborhood,” full of former classmates. Bennett is a 1998 Lahainaluna alum and his wife is a 2000 grad.

Since losing their home in the fire, the family has gone from a friend’s couch to another friend’s home in Nāpili to their own place in Kahana, but they’re working on plans so they can apply for a permit to rebuild in their old neighborhood. Sometimes Bennett will swing by just to say hi to his neighbors and daydream about the moment he’ll get to move back.

“Being in other people’s houses, it’s like, you don’t feel like you’re at home,” said Bennett, a longtime boat captain who runs his own boat repair company, Maui Outboard Service. “Owning your own house … you have security. You pay your bill, you’re not going to get kicked out. … This is my house. My kids have this house.”

Alexander said the experience of the wildfire will forever bond the neighborhood.

“We all see each other and talk, but I’m sure it’s going to be more closely now than before, because we’ve all been through the same thing and have the same experience and can understand what we’ve all gone through,” she said. “Until you’ve gone through it, you don’t really know.”