All posts tagged "Honolulu Civil Beat"

This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat. You can sign up for Civil Beat's newsletter here and support the nonprofit newsroom here.

PORTLAND, Ore. — On an autumn-chilled Saturday seven weeks after the fire, U‘i Kahue-Cabanting awoke under crisp, white hotel sheets in the shadow of a snow-capped Mount Hood. Thousands of miles from her FEMA-funded room at the Westin on Maui, she found herself nevertheless surrounded by generic stand-ins for the basic things she’d lost: bath towels, her bed, bar soap.

Kahue-Cabanting had flown to Portland during the rainy tail of September to teach Hawaii expats how to weave coconut fronds into durable hats and baskets. More than half of all Native Hawaiians reside outside of Hawaii, according to the U.S. Census, many of them driven away by the astronomical cost of island living. It was her third trip to the mainland this year to share the ancient craft as a balm for identity loss....

This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat. You can sign up for Civil Beat's newsletter here and support the nonprofit newsroom here.

Neither Maui’s fire chief nor its top emergency management official were on the Valley Isle on Tuesday despite the wildfires there being well underway.

Further, on Thursday county officials couldn’t or wouldn’t say when or if the evacuation order for Lahaina was issued or how those plans had unfolded two nights earlier when fire swiftly consumed the town, leaving at least 55 people confirmed dead. ...