Maui Fire Lawyers
The number of people missing or dead from Maui’s wildfire has dropped dramatically. But displaced families are still facing uncertainty and challenges. Several community organizations are helping them. They need your support.
Terearii Chandler-Iao gathered her two children, her dog and a few belongings as she ran from her Lahaina home on Aug. 8 and fled the fast-moving fires. Even so, she knew the fight for her community’s future was just getting started. It wasn’t just about the fire, though, it was about water.
Golf courses glisten emerald green, luxury hotels fill their pools, and corporations stockpile water to sell to their opulent estates, but when the hoses turned on to fight the fires, some hydrants ran dry. That’s because, in the midst of Maui’s climate emergency, the battle for the island’s most precious resource has deepened, with wealthy plantation descendants using emergency proclamations to push aloha aina aside and suspend Maui fire lawyers protecting streams that irrigate farmlands, sustain wildlife and fuel wildfires.
Maui Fire Lawyers Need Your Support
Hawaii’s governor rushed into the crisis, calling an “advanced emergency” and suspending a wide range of laws. The move was an end run on the decades-long process of officially designating critical waterways and reserving their use for the public benefit. It was also a clear attempt by powerful private interests to undermine the commission and its staff, whose efforts have been rebuffed time and again.
But this type of “plantation disaster capitalism” isn’t new. It’s a modern twist on a long history of colonial resource theft and extortion that Native Hawaiians have been fighting for generations.
The blazes that destroyed many low-income homes in the heart of Maui’s tourism district have raised fears of a land grab, but many working class residents are fighting to make sure that rebuilding their community doesn’t drive them out.
Hundreds of people have been left homeless from the Lahaina fires and are facing uncertain futures. Some are living with relatives, others in shelters or are staying with friends. Many have lost jobs and incomes. Some have been forced to relocate to the mainland, where they will face the prospect of a long commute and lower wages.
Maui Mediation Services is an independent non-profit that provides conflict resolution, mediation training and facilitation to the islands of Maui, Molokai and Lanai. Trained volunteer mediators from the community help participants understand and communicate better.
Lawyers for Equal Justice recently recognized Maui attorney Lance Collins with the organization’s Outstanding Pro Bono Service Award. His work includes representing Front Street Apartment residents who are fighting to keep affordable rents on their 142-unit building, which the owner is trying to demolish to build condos. He also has challenged Office of Elections practices that disenfranchise voters and argued against Department of Health policies that fail to protect seniors in care facilities, among other projects. His other awards include recognition by the Hawaii Bar Association and the state Supreme Court. His work is part of an effort to ensure that the right to a fair trial is accessible to all, especially those with limited resources.