After Kula Hospital flooded in March during the Kona low storms, long-term patient Brent Kim had to be transferred to O‘ahu. For the 57-year-old with developmental disabilities, the unexpected move was traumatic.

He refused to eat or drink for two weeks. Twice.

To stay hydrated, he had to be hooked up to an IV. 

Kim dropped from 122 to 102 pounds while being displaced from his familiar caregivers at Kula Hospital’s Hale Makamae, the only intermediate care facility for adults with developmental disabilities in the state.

But since returning to Maui, albeit at another location, Kim has been doing much better. He willingly eats, drinks and takes his medication, and now he’s back up to about 113 pounds.

“The important thing is the people who are back and that he’s familiar with,” his father Clayton Kim said. 

After five months of uncertainty and displacement, family members of the Hale Makamae residents who were transferred from Maui to O‘ahu after the storms are relieved to have their loved ones back with the Kula staff they know and trust. 

It brings them one step closer to finally returning to their long-term home on the slopes of Haleakalā. Last week, hospital operator Maui Health, Kaiser Permanente and the State of Hawai‘i announced a jointly funded $65 million plan to restore and reopen Kula Hospital and Hale Makamae, where 112 patients had to be evacuated due to damage from the storm.  

The restoration project will include “repairs and modernization of interior spaces and essential building systems, including resident rooms, activity rooms and nurse stations,” Maui Health said. Plans also call for replacing exterior windows and doors with “custom, weather-protective units designed to meet historic-preservation requirements and better protect the facility from future severe weather.” 

The state is contributing $42 million to the repairs, while Kaiser Permanente is investing $23 million. Maui Health said it would disclose a reopening timeline once it is confirmed. 

“This is an important moment for Kula Hospital and for the Upcountry community,” Wade Ebersole, interim CEO of Maui Health, said in a news release on Sept. 22. “We can now move forward with restoring Kula Hospital and bringing care back to this campus.”

Most of Kula Hospital’s displaced patients are still scattered across health care facilities on Maui. Fifteen patients are currently receiving care at Maui Memorial Medical Center, while 55 are located at Maui Health’s Kula Kai facility in Kīhei. Hale Makua is hosting 16 other Kula residents at its two facilities in Kahului and Wailuku, according to Hale Makua CEO Wes Lo. 

Hale Makua was already operating at a staffing deficit before the storms displaced the Kula patients, and taking on additional patients exacerbated the shortage. However, they’ve learned to handle it with overtime staffing and are prepared to open more beds if needed, Lo said. 

He added that Hale Makua is “doing OK” for now when it comes to available beds, partly because there has not yet been the influx of patients who often come in during the winter flu season. 

“We’ve always taken care of the community the best we can and we open up as many beds as we can,” Lo said. 

He said he was “hopeful” for Kula Hospital’s restoration plans and sees the project as a great chance to not only repair the hospital but build it back to handle the health needs of the future. 

For now, eight of the nine Hale Makamae residents who are back on Maui are living in an interim location at Maui Memorial. Maui Health said after the storms that they had to be sent to O‘ahu because there were no adequate facilities on island to care for them. 

“Our goal was always to bring them back to Maui as quickly as we could, but we first needed a safe space that could meet their care needs,” Maui Health said in a statement to the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative on Friday. “As soon as the interim location was identified and ready … we began bringing residents back to Maui. We remain committed to supporting our residents and their families as we work toward their return to Kula.”

The first Hale Makamae resident came back on Aug. 20, and the rest followed throughout August and September, according to Maui Health. 

Other families say a ninth resident has been relocated near a relative on another island, though Maui Health said it could not confirm this due to privacy reasons.

In March, Hale Makamae resident Kelly Kaho‘ohanohano left in tears as he was evacuated from Kula and airlifted to O‘ahu. In September, when he rode up to Maui Memorial in an ambulance and the EMTs pulled open the doors, “he was smiling from ear to ear.”

His sister Moana Kaho‘ohanohano, who came to greet him, said: “I got emotional. I said, ‘Kelly you’re home.’ … He was so happy.” 

Like Brent Kim, Kelly Kaho‘ohanohano had struggled at first on O‘ahu. He refused to get out of bed for two weeks, “kind of his way of protest” over having to leave Maui. He got bed sores, leading to a week at Queen’s Medical Center, where a tough love video call by his sister convinced him to return to his daily routine. 

Kelly Kaho‘ohanohano, who’s lived at Hale Makamae for 34 years, is spastic and has cerebral palsy, but he is able to communicate through a computer. His sister said he sees himself as “the voice” for his fellow residents, some of whom are unable to speak. He constantly asked about them while he was on O‘ahu.

He sent emails to hospital administrators to advocate for their return to Maui, which gave him a sense of purpose while he was displaced. 

All he wanted was to be home in time for Christmas, his sister said. Now, he’ll get to celebrate the holidays with his family on Maui.

As she drove home from the hospital on the day her brother came back, Moana Kaho‘ohanohano suddenly felt a sense of relief and a weight lifted off of her shoulders that she didn’t realize she had been carrying.

“I didn’t know this until he came home or realize it, but there’s always that undercurrent of anxiety,” she said. “They could call at any time that something is happening, or Kelly is not doing well and we got to be able to get to him. Unfortunately, it’s not just a car ride, right? You gotta get on that plane. We’re so thankful we never had to do that.” 

She added that there was an unexpected benefit of going to O‘ahu. The place he ended up at, Kulana Malama in Ewa Beach, offers specialized respiratory care, and Kelly came back with better oxygenation and improved lung capacity.  

Brent Kim, who can’t speak, walk or eat on his own, and suffers regularly from seizures, had to shuffle between three facilities while on O‘ahu, starting with Lē‘ahi Hospital before transferring to Arc in Hawai‘i and also spending a stint at Straub Hospital when he refused to eat and ended up severely dehydrated.

Marilyn Kim, Brent’s stepmom, said that on a visit to Maui after Brent’s return, his caregivers showed them the trick they’d learned to get him to eat — wrapping his rice in nori (seaweed). 

For Clayton Kim lives on O‘ahu, it’s bittersweet to see his son go back to Maui.

But he said Brent’s well-being is what he most cares about: “The important lesson is new routines, new caregivers, new surroundings prove to be too traumatic for somebody as medically or mentally fragile a person like Brent.”