Perceptions of Response and Recovery Efforts for the 2023 Maui Wildfires

Background and Purpose
On August 8, 2023, high winds on Maui knocked over power lines belonging to Hawaiʻi’s public utility. This sparked the deadliest wildfire in the United States in over a century, ultimately leaving 106 people dead. Beyond loss of life, evidence indicates a massive mental health toll, with a 97% increase in suicide deaths in the month following the fires and a 50% depression prevalence among residents exposed to the wildfire. Furthermore, it appears that disaster assistance led to a rapidly increasing cost of living in an already expensive location. Discontent with the official response to the wildfire prompted a class-action lawsuit, which the state of Hawaiʻi recently settled for over $4 billion. Given these tensions, we conducted a qualitative study to explore two research questions: 1) How did residents perceive the response and recovery efforts? And 2) how do residents perceive the ongoing rebuilding of Maui?

Methods
Five focus groups were conducted with residents of Maui who were exposed to the wildfires, divided by ethnoracial identity to reflect the composition of the local population: Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Latino, Filipino, and a multiethnic group. The Latino group was conducted in Spanish and the Filipino group in Tagalog. Results were transcribed and translated as needed. Researchers used a deductive-inductive thematic analysis approach to analyze the data. Codes were initially developed from the interview guide and applied by a team of coders. Codes were then refined during the coding process (either expanded or collapsed as needed), and themes derived from the refined coding structure.

Results
Three primary themes emerged with regards to the research question. The first was that residents were frustrated with impersonal and rigid governmental aid processes that were seen as disconnected from the context and culture of Maui. This fueled mistrust towards the government, particularly among Native Hawaiian participants. The second theme was a favorable perception of local response efforts, primarily food aid, and a greater desire for local control over the disaster recovery. The third theme was that there were widely-shared feelings of precarity with regards to the ability of the local community to remain intact, given the rising cost of living. This reaction was linked to a perception that tourists and other outsiders were being favored in the rebuilding process.

Conclusions and Implications
Results suggest that cumbersome and culturally-incongruent aid processes following disasters in areas with histories of colonialism might increase mistrust in multiple levels of government, particularly among indigenous Pacific populations, and undermine a sense of community following disaster. Furthermore, disaster recovery in areas where tourism is a major industry may heighten pre-existing social tensions, to the extent that tourists are seen as benefiting over local residents. Participants expressed a desire to receive help from aid actors with whom they could build relationships, in keeping with Pacific cultural norms. Enhancing local control over disaster aid may mitigate some of these concerns, as well as having long-term disaster case managers or other aid actors with whom survivors are able to build connections.