Jackie Ellis’ spreadsheet of students and others affected by the fire
Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.
Over the summer, wildfires devastated West Maui. Experts suspect that invasive grasses made the fires worse. As the smoke clears, we wondered what it’s been like for people to return to their neighborhoods and what it means to live in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
We had Emily Tom look into it.
Emily Tom: Hi, Megan.
Megan Hall: So, Emily, you’re from Hawai‘i.
Emily Tom: Yeah, I’m from Honolulu, so we weren’t impacted by the fires.
Megan Hall: Right.
Emily Tom: But we’ve all been checking in on friends, making sure they’re okay, and hearing stories about people who ran from the fires. One of those people was Jackie Ellis.
Jackie Ellis: Every minute, it was just more and more smoke, until our whole neighborhood was smoke.
Emily Tom: She’s been a teacher at Lahainaluna High School for five years. When she and her roommate saw flames coming down the mountain and toward Lahaina, she packed some things and drove away with her dogs.
Jackie Ellis: And so I just kind of flew down this one street. And that’s when I passed by my student who was there, who ended up pulling up next to me at a light. That’s when the embers started flying in.
Emily Tom: She and her former student were able to escape together.
Megan Hall: What else happened? Was Jackie’s house okay?
Emily Tom: She’s been back to Lahaina a few times now, and her house is still standing. But Jackie’s worried about a lot more than her property. I mean, this was the deadliest wildfire in the country in the last 100 years. People are grieving, not just for the lives lost, but for the town itself.
Jackie Ellis: Driving through Lahaina is maybe the hardest I think I’ve ever cried. It just, like, is its own entity. Like, it has such spirit — mana — and like, everything. And so to see it like that was very hard. It was like you’ve lost a loved one.
Emily Tom: And with loss comes a sense of uncertainty. Like, once you’ve gone through a disaster like this, what are you supposed to do next?
Jackie Ellis: That was my first question, kind of like waking up the next morning is where is everyone going to go?
Emily Tom: Plus there’s the issue of land. Jackie said a lot of residents are worried that Lahaina is going to be bought out by outsiders and rebuilt as the next Waikiki.
Jackie Ellis: The biggest fear people have is big hotels or big companies buying up big plots of land from people who just can’t afford to pay a mortgage on a house that’s not there anymore.
Megan Hall: Jeez. It sounds like people are dealing with a lot on top of recovering from a natural disaster.
Emily Tom: Definitely. The past few months have been hard, and it’s a long road ahead. But Jackie said she’s seen people turn to each other for strength and support.
Jackie Ellis: What I love about the people here, about all my friends in the community, is like they really do have this positive, bright, forceful spirit. Like, it’s hard to get them down. And so I know that the community will stay strong and you know, they’re gonna fight for everything that they need and deserve.
Megan Hall: For people hearing about Jackie’s story who want to help, how can they do that?
Emily Tom: Jackie actually put together
a spreadsheet of a bunch of fundraisers for people affected by the wildfires, including some of her students. That means you can help, even if you’re all the way on the East Coast. We’ll include a link in the transcript of this episode.
Megan Hall: Great. Thank you, Emily.
That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go to the public’s radio dot org slash possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.
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Possibly is a co-production of The Public’s Radio, Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, and Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative.
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