Petition calls for Holomua Road closure after 380-acre fire; houseless community says it’s not to blame

PĀ‘IA — Tania Kawa‘akoa shakes her head at the notion that one of the roughly 25 people who live in their cars, tents and temporary shelters along Holomua Road had anything to do with the 380-acre blaze that broke out Tuesday in the open fields above Pā‘ia and Kū‘au.

“Why would we do that at a place that we live at?” Kawa‘akoa said Friday as crews worked to mop up the last of the fire.

The Maui Fire Department’s preliminary investigative report suggests the fire was intentionally set at two separate starting points, but not in the stretch of roadway where the houseless Holomua residents live.

There currently are no suspects or known ignition sources, spokesperson Chris Stankis said.

But that has not stopped the houseless community from taking the heat.

As of Saturday, more than 150 people had signed an online petition calling for the closure of the Holomua Road community for the safety of the nearby towns.

“We’re always blamed for anything,” Kawa‘akoa’s husband Micah Ching said. 

The fire was declared 100% contained as of Friday evening, and crews were still working to put out hot spots within the perimeter, the Maui Fire Department said. No one was injured and no structures were damaged. 

But the close call led to evacuations and reignited the debate over fire risks, serving as a sobering reminder of what residents have feared after incidents that included the 2019 brush fire that burned 600 acres in Pā‘ia and the 2023 wildfires that devastated the towns of Lahaina and Kula. 

“It was like, is this going to be another disaster unfolding?” said Lissa Strohecker, one of about 20 staff with the Maui Invasive Species Committee who had to evacuate Tuesday afternoon from their offices in the Old Maui High School. “It was just a very helpless feeling, and it was very frustrating, because as I said, we’ve been raising this (issue) over and over again for years.”

The fire came at a time when Maui County is making plans to install gates on Holomua Road, which Maui County Council Member Nohe U‘u-Hodgins thinks could have helped prevent the fire. Last year, after 40 fires were reported along the road during the first five months of the year, U‘u-Hodgins proposed a bill to close the road. The council passed the measure in June 2024, but the county has yet to block it off.

“I don’t really want to blame anyone,” said U‘u-Hodgins, who holds the Makawao-Ha‘ikū-Pā‘ia seat on the council. “I just would rather look at the fact that it could have been prevented.”

U‘u-Hodgins said the plan is to install three gates: one at the bottom of Holomua Road that would close only at night, another on the gravel portion of the road above Old Maui High, and a third near the Baldwin Avenue entrance to Holomua Road just below Makawao Union Church. She said they would be equipped with sensors that would open when triggered by emergency vehicle sirens. 

But the county is still waiting on permits, and the discovery of iwi kūpuna in the area has also complicated things, she said. 

Maui County spokesperson Laksmi Abraham said the county has a design team and expects to begin the next planning phase in the coming weeks.

“Because of the cultural and environmental sensitivities in the area, formal reviews are required, making the timeline less predictable,” Abraham said via email on Friday. “Even so, we are hopeful to be shovel-ready next year.”

But emergency officials and folks who live and work in the area say the gates are not a guarantee that it will stop people from starting fires in the area where strong winds and dry grass can quickly fuel a blaze. 

The most recent fire started about 1:29 p.m. on Tuesday. Fire crews received a call that a brush fire was burning near the corner of Holomua Road and Baldwin Avenue, prompting closures on both roads and evacuation orders in multiple areas of Pā‘ia.

A robust response of six engines, three wildland apparatus, two tankers, three helicopters, two state airport fire apparatus, contract tankers and heavy equipment attacked the fire on the first day. They managed to contain it at 50% and stop forward progress overnight. By Wednesday evening, it was 70% contained.

Maui Fire Department said Thursday that a preliminary investigation found two separate suspected areas of origin, each measuring 20 feet by 20 feet and located about 300 feet apart on the upper portion of Holomua Road about a mile below the Baldwin Avenue intersection. A separate brush fire was reported in the same general area on Monday night.

“The close temporal and geographic proximity of these events suggests a potential link between the incidents and strengthens the hypothesis that the fires were intentionally set by the same person or under similar circumstances,” the report said. 

U‘u-Hodgins first got word of the fire as her husband was picking up their son at the elementary school on Tuesday afternoon.

“He texts me: ‘Big fire right next to the school,’ and my heart just sank,” she said.

U‘u-Hodgins, who said the school didn’t notify parents until the evening, called her grandma who lives in Kū‘au and left a meeting to hurry home to Olinda where several of her family members had evacuated, just as they did two months ago during the tsunami warning. 

“It happens so many times that you just get a little bit numb,” U‘u-Hodgins said of the latest threat.

The recurring risk has set some in the community on edge, and now some are pushing the county to remove the community on Holomua Road.

Earlier this summer, citing public health and fire hazards, the county forced people out of houseless communities in Kahului and Ukumehame.

In the online petition, the unnamed residents said the latest fire and the recent “success of making Amala Place and Ukumehame safe again” show that the same could be done at Holomua.

“It is not about the encampments, it is about the safety of Maui people from these dangerous situations,” the petition said. “The Lahaina fire taught us what happens when warning signs are ignored. How much ignoring needs to happen? Tuesday’s Pa‘ia fire came way too close to keiki, homes, and was a reminder of the devastation that can happen so quickly!!!”

The petition also raises concerns over public safety on a road that people use for walking with their dogs or kids.

It calls on the county to provide safe shelter for Holomua Road residents through its Safe Parking Program, which has been in the works for years; clear out rubbish on the road and close it off to camping; expedite the installation of the gate; and speed up the installation of a siren in the area.  

It’s unclear who is behind the petition. On the website, the petition starter is listed as “Ku‘au Pa‘ia Residents.” The Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative has reached out to the organizers through change.org for comment.  

Abraham said the county wasn’t “comfortable speculating about the level of risk that is associated with the encampment.” But she said there are currently no plans to clear out the community living on Holomua Road.

“We are aware of concerns associated with Holomua Road, and we are actively in the process of evaluating potential solutions to address those concerns in the near future,” Abraham said.

U‘u-Hodgins said she wants the road to be safer, and many community members want that too. 

“But at the same time, I don’t want to just say yes (to clearing the road) and not have places for people to go,” she said.

FEELING LIKE THE SCAPEGOAT

Both the county and the community have worked to clear out abandoned cars and trash on the road. In April 2024, the county removed 60 vehicles and a couple hundred tons of garbage. Mō‘ī Kawa‘akoa, who is Tania’s sister and the primary force behind Holomua Outreach, a grassroots organization dedicated to helping people who are living along Holomua Road, said they also hold bimonthly cleanups.

She said the reaction after the recent fire is “nothing new.” 

“It could be anybody that started that fire, and for anybody to even just put the blame on a homeless encampment, we gotta stop the scapegoating,” she said. 

She doesn’t think the gates will stop “people with bad intentions” from accessing the road, and she worries they’ll create a situation similar to Lahaina where locked gates slowed the evacuation during the Aug. 8, 2023 wildfire. 

“Putting up gates on that road ain’t gonna solve nothing,” she said. “Honestly, all I think it’s doing is just causing division.” 

She added via text that the residents never planned to be on Holomua Road permanently, “but the barriers in place etc. keeps this community here.”

Standing at the neighborhood hub where folks can stop by for canned goods, Tania Kawa‘akoa said the Holomua community gets a lot of backlash just for being unhoused, but that they try to do their part by holding regular cleanups. 

“We’re still here — maybe they do see a difference,” she said.

Alika Bright, a 55-year-old construction worker who’s lived on Holomua Road for about four years, said the houseless residents and neighboring communities are family, not enemies. He pointed out that the rubbish on the road could’ve been left by residents with homes who didn’t want to drive to the dump, and he urged less blame and more compassion.

“It’s not always what you see. It’s not always what you think it is,” he said. “I got no enemies, and I invite everybody to come over and sit with me and talk story.”

Kawa‘akoa and Bright said they didn’t evacuate on the day of the fire because it was moving in the other direction. The Maui Police Department determined there was no threat to the area and didn’t order an evacuation, Abraham said.  

Strohecker knows many of the faces she sees when she drives down Holomua Road from the Maui Invasive Species Committee’s facilities. 

“I don’t think it’s fair to blame them at all,” Strohecker said. “But I think that it’s a risk leaving the situation as it is.” 

Regardless of who caused the latest inferno, Strohecker said fires have been a concern in the area for years, and the risk is just getting worse with increasing periods of drought. If the winds had been stronger or shifted direction on Tuesday, the damage could’ve been much worse, she pointed out.

She said putting up gates won’t necessarily solve the problem. In fact, leaving them open and allowing traffic to pass through could actually create more visibility and deter people from trying to start fires.

“It makes us nervous because that leaves us trapped if there’s a fire below us,” said Strohecker, whose colleagues sometimes drive the road late at night on their way back from the field.

Strohecker said the community needs to find a solution that protects both unhoused residents and the nearby towns.

IS ROAD CLOSURE THE ANSWER?

Stankis, the Maui Fire Department spokesperson, said there have been 25 fires on the Holomua Road corridor so far this year. Most have been brush fires but some have also been abandoned vehicle fires. 

He said gates could help limit the number of fires in the area, but it’s “unrealistic” to think they’ll stop them all. The fires on the road “are about an even split between daytime and nighttime,” so overnight closures wouldn’t eliminate the risk. The most recent fire started in the early afternoon, he pointed out. 

“We’re really just gonna have to take a wait-and-see approach” with the gates, he said.

Maui Emergency Management Agency Deputy Director Kono Davis said Holomua Road is one of the many areas that has been discussed as the agency works with the Maui Fire Department on fire mitigation. 

“We’re identifying the high-risk areas, which means urban interface areas where there’s agricultural land or open field borders homes, next to major streets, next to critical infrastructure,” Davis explained. 

Fire Chief Brad Ventura said in a statement to the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative that the department has “worked with the landowner to meet Fire Code requirements near nearby homes.”

“At MFD’s request, the landowner also cleared vegetation and plowed the field along Holomua Road — an extra precaution taken beyond what the fire code requires,” Ventura said. 

Public tax and business records show the lands adjacent to Holomua Road are owned by Alexander & Baldwin and Mahi Pono affiliates. Mahi Pono could not be immediately reached for comment on Friday. 

When asked if closing Holomua Road would make it safer, Maui Police Department spokesperson Lt. Gregg Okamoto said, “No, because I mean, it’s a public use road.”

“If we close the road, what is the plan? Is it like a temporary closure while we address the issue, or is it like a permanent closure?” he said. “Does that deter the unsheltered from going there?”

He said the county needs a “more collaborative and more long-term” solution and that the Maui Police Department will “do our part when the time comes.”

On Holomua Road, residents are just trying to be prepared for anything.

“We’re not tripping out. We got a plan,” Tania Kawa‘akoa said. “My sister, she’s Holomua Outreach, so because of her, we have hope.”