HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Before the Lahaina wildfire on Aug. 8, there have been almost 100 boats In Lahaina boat harbor. Today, simply 15 are nonetheless floating within the harbor. Many others had been destroyed.
Nearly a month after the flames ripped by way of the city, those that nonetheless have their boats and even those that misplaced vessels are calling on authorities to make clear what the clean-up course of will appear like.
They say they’re upset that work hasn’t begun but.
“The first part included searching for bodies and doing recovery and stuff like that and now we’re coming into this phase of let’s get the harbor cleaned up,” stated Keao Shaw, who owned Makai Adventures. “We’re hoping that’s going to happen as soon as possible.”
Shaw misplaced his boat business and home on Aug. 8.
He realizes the dialogue of bringing again vacationers to West Maui is a fragile one to have.
“I see both sides of the coin. I’m born and raised here four generations. I have two kids and I need to figure out a way to provide for them. I was always told, follow your heart and do what you want to do when you grow up. Do what you love when you grow up and I fell in love with boats,” added Shaw.
His plight, sadly, is all too frequent in West Maui.
“All the income and my future, gone. I lost three boats, three vehicles, six motorcycles, everything I had built up in 40 years out here,” stated Dan Schaffer, proprietor of Kaanapali Ocean Adventures.
He desires a sooner Coast Guard cleanup and a seat on the desk when that course of is completed.
He additionally has targets he says ought to be comparatively possible to perform.
“We need the fuel dock opened up,” stated Schaffer, who tells HNN with out the Lahaina Fuel Dock, boats like his need to journey nice lengths to gasoline up.
“The fuel dock didn’t burn up. A couple of hoses burned up and the fuel dock is intact. Also, Malama wharf should be open today. I mean, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be. Nothing happened to the boat ramp. It’s in perfect shape. They’ve cleared the road,” added Schaffer.
Smaller operations like Peter Colombo’s Hawaii Ocean Rafting are pleading for the state’s boating authority to get artistic. He additionally misplaced all his boats and his Lahaina home.
“With the options that we have, the biggest hurdle being just we’re not sure,” Colombo stated.
“Even if I had a boat tomorrow where I could operate that boat out of because my permits are based out of Lahaina harbor and the harbor is not usable. So it doesn’t really give me a lot of options to even come up with a plan or begin to think about what we’re going to do.”
In an interview on Hawaii News Now Sunrise on Thursday, Coast Guard Capt. Asia Kirksey was pressed to offer a timeline for the cleanup course of to be completed.
“It’s still very early in the response for us to be able to predict a timeline and I know that’s also frustrating. But what I can say is that with a response this complex, it’s it’s probably more frustrating for us to try to predict a timeline and to have that target move,” stated Kirksey.
Harbor customers like Dan Schaffer says that almost a month after the catastrophe, that reply isn’t sufficient.
“It seems like we don’t have a say in anything and we are hoping we will in the future,” stated Schaffer.
Hawaii News Now reached out to the Department of Land and Natural Resources for remark. They declined our request for an interview.
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