All posts tagged "Maui"

A Hawaiian congressional candidate who got knocked out with a single punch after allegedly threatening a couple with a gun and pulling a knife on them was facing terrorism charges on Tuesday, according to reports.

Democrat Kirill Basin, who is running for Congress against incumbent Jill Tokuda, was arrested on suspicion of making terroristic threats after he got into a brawl in Maui, TMZ reported.

Witnesses told police a 61-year-old man asked Basin to turn down his music at Keawakapu Beach. Basin apparently didn't take it well, and allegedly implied that he had a gun and would shoot the man's wife....

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.

One year after deadly wildfires upended life on Maui, several thousand people gathered across the island Thursday to grieve the lives that were lost, reflect on all they’ve endured and affirm their resolve to keep their communities intact as the difficult work to rebuild continues.

At Hanakao’o Park in West Maui, chants of “Lahaina strong!” echoed across the water as hundreds of those residents paddled out on surfboards just offshore from the beach park. They cheered and splashed as crews aboard the Hawaiian voyaging canoes Hokule’a and Mo’okiha O Pi’ilani looked on in support.

Thousands of flower petals rained down on the paddlers from a helicopter overhead....

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.

With the trailer on a barge en route to Hawaii, two business partners plan to set up a makeshift home on the now-cleared property.

For three weeks, heaping piles of gravel sat untouched on the dirt lot where Mario Siatris’ house once stood.

The gravel, a form of erosion control, needed to be spread out over the dirt, the final step in an intricate process overseen by the federal government to clear fire-ravaged Lahaina properties of hazards and toxic waste. ...

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.

The Attorney General's much-anticipated report provides new insight into the fire response but does not address the cause of the fire.

As fires spread in Lahaina, Hawaii, on Aug. 8, Maui firefighters reported troubling news to their commander. At 4:25 p.m., the advancing fire was engulfing homes and businesses near the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Ulupono Street and nearby Kahoma Stream was unlikely to stop the flames....

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.

The power was already out in West Maui at 5 a.m. on Aug. 8 and it could have stayed that way had Hawaiian Electric decided not to re-energize its lines.

Instead, the company rebooted a tripped transmission line so that it could provide electricity to some of its customers in Lahaina despite an ongoing windstorm and repeated warnings of extreme fire danger....

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....