Workers and equipment are being shipped to the island while officials plot how to carefully but quickly remove hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic debris.
Search and rescue members conduct operations in fire-damaged areas Aug. 18 in Lahaina, Hawaii.
Lahaina, the former capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, is also a sacred place for Native Hawaiians, which means the wreckage of the town is not simply waste to be hauled away en masse. The rubble contains all that’s left of irreplaceable cultural artifacts, such as ceremonial stones and burial sites. That has meant the project is not just rehabilitation, but an effort at preservation.
In the aftermath of a disaster, the cleanup phase is a crucial and often-overlooked step along the path to recovery. This part begins after the flames are extinguished, the emergency ends and the national spotlight has moved on.In Lahaina, homes that housed generations of families were reduced to concrete slabs and cinders. Cars caught in the scramble to flee still sit twisted and burned along the streets in pools of melted metal.
“We have not in our history had such a fire occur on a Pacific island,” said EPA Incident Commander Steve Calanog. “Getting people and things here and getting the waste off is a huge logistical challenge.” Army Corps teams and contractors will probably truck this debris to one or more of Maui’s handful of landfills, the Corps said. Maui County has not identified which landfills will accept the debris, or said whether they have sufficient capacity, an issue that has arisen after recent California wildfires.]
Authorities have estimated a 6- to 12-month timeline for debris removal, as they labor under the competing pressures of public expectations that it be completed quickly, but without inflicting more harm on a community that is still suffering. But they say it could stretch on longer. Calanog, of the EPA, was more direct. His team may not get paychecks if the government shuts down, but they’ll continue to work, he said, just as they did in the aftermath of the 2018 Camp Fire, when the federal government shut down for 35 days.
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