, orange-and-white jersey barriers, fences and uniformed soldiers still block nearly everyone but a select — and opaque — group of authorized visitorshazards and a meticulous, ongoing search for human remains, withcombing multistory and commercial buildings, having finished searching residences.
Red Lightning resorted to meeting one resident on airport grounds north of Lahaina, teaching him there to set up the system and sending him on his way. Maui County did not respond to questions about the process or timeline for permission to enter the disaster area. But in aThursday, it said that “there is no list allowing residents to return” and that neither Maui police, FEMA nor the National Guard is currently facilitating requests.
One woman arrived crying, saying she hadn’t seen her grandparents since the fire and hoped to find a trace of them. Others, buckling under the weight of tremendous loss, become angry.“It’s tough. I’ll never understand what they’re going through,” Tumada said. “Sometimes it’s best to just let them speak and get it out, to just let them lash out.”This week, nearly two weeks after the fire, Estrelle Versola, 42, approached the Lahainaluna checkpoint, two blocks from where her house once stood.
“They know that their cat is alive, and we’re going on week three,” said Rikert, a special-education teacher who also owns a cat boarding business and is now housing, for free, 13 cats and three giant tortoises belonging to fire evacuees. Without food or water, animals inside the disaster area won’t be able to survive much longer, she said.Rescuers want to be allowed in, even to “throw a rock into the window and throw food in,” she said.