Why Lahaina remains largely untouched nearly 3 years after the fire

LAHAINA, Hawaii — At the northern end of Front Street, visitors crowd the sidewalks, waiting for tables and meandering between businesses that survived the 2023 wildfire, which was the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century. Mala Ocean Tavern is serving customers. So are Old Lahaina Luau, Lahaina Cannery Mall, Star Noodle, Honu Oceanside and others.

Farther south, the tour boats have returned to Lahaina Harbor, drawing people back to the waterfront. But nearby, the Old Lahaina Courthouse is still a burned shell, cracked and charred with missing windows. Its four large pillars still stand, but the roof they once held up is no longer there. Visitors stop to take a photo of Lahaina’s famous banyan tree just beyond the courthouse; behind a metal fence, the tree is steadily rebounding. 

Between those pockets of activity lies the heart of Front Street, which is closed and inaccessible. Orange barriers and “do not enter” signs block much of where the town’s commercial center once buzzed with restaurants, shops, art galleries and tourists. 

Wind-driven flames tore through the coastal town in August 2023, killing at least 102 people and leaving rubble and ash in their wake. More than 2,200 homes, businesses and other structures were destroyed, and more than 12,000 people were displaced. Today, just 751 households have transitioned out of housing assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, while 530 remain in FEMA-provided temporary housing and another 260 receive rental assistance, even as the island continues to face a severe shortage in affordable housing.

Almost three years later, Lahaina’s full recovery is still far off. At the same time, Maui County continues to lose residents at an accelerated rate; its population is down 3,400 since the disaster. Uncertainty over how and when much of Lahaina will be rebuilt, including along Front Street, has added to the growing frustration. 

As I drive through Lahaina, signs of progress are easy to miss, given the large scale of the devastation. There are many empty lots where only foundations remain, some now overtaken by overgrowth. Still, rebuilding is happening.

Nearly 200 residential homes have been reconstructed and are approved for occupancy, while more than 500 building permits have been issued for homes. But it’s clear there is a long way to go.

“There’s a good number of houses being rebuilt, but then you do see a good amount of lots that are still untouched,” Jordan Ruidas, the founder of the community organization Lahaina Strong, told SFGATE. She said that the community has expressed to the group that there are “still some holdups” in the permitting process, and properties along the shoreline especially seem to be stalled. “[They] are still kind of not sure what the building process is going to look like for them,” she said, referring to the county’s plans for this area.

Lahaina homeowners navigating the rebuilding process must work through insurance claims and financing, while those along the shoreline face additional hurdles, like historic district and coastal regulations.

Lahaina Strong has been advocating for its residents. That includes providing strong support for the passage of Bill 9, which phases out thousands of transient vacation rentals to increase the inventory of long-term housing.

Community members see the recovery as a chance to restore parts of Lahaina that had long been hidden by modern development. Once the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Lahaina holds deep cultural and historical significance. After decades of community-led efforts to restore important sites struggled to gain traction, the fires have renewed momentum around that effort.

Lahaina Strong is particularly excited about the restoration of the Lahaina Royal Complex, including Mokuula, which was a sacred island located in the middle of a freshwater pond, Loko o Mokuhinia. Once home to King Kamehameha III, it had been buried under a baseball field for more than a century. The state’s first Department of Oiwi Resources is leading the effort.

“I’m getting chicken skin just talking about it,” Ruidas said, recounting that while the idea of restoring Mokuula felt like “a far-off dream,” even after the fire, her group has been buoyed by the county, the state and its governor promoting the project. 

“There is active construction on about 60% of properties where single-family homes were destroyed in the wildfires,” Maui County Deputy Managing Director Erin Wade told SFGATE in an email, adding that the county implemented a fast-track permitting process for homeowners. The average time to receive building permit approvals is now 44 days, Wade said.

“The goal is to support a community-driven recovery that honors Lahaina’s cultural and historic significance while improving safety and resilience,” Maui County Planning Director Jacky Takakura told SFGATE in an email. “Rebuilding efforts aim to incorporate fire-resistant materials, updated infrastructure and thoughtful planning that reflects community input.”

The fire destroyed nearly all of the historic buildings and museums managed by the Lahaina Restoration Foundation, including Baldwin Home, the Wo Hing Chinese Museum and the Old Lahaina Courthouse. The plan is to rebuild them as they were.

“It is standard restoration policy to rebuild as close as possible to what was there before, taking into account new safety standards and ADA regulations,” Theo Morrison, the executive director of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation, told SFGATE in an email. He said the buildings will look similar to their appearance before the fire, but changes may include using fire-resistant shingles instead of cedar, for example.

In the aftermath, teams have recovered Native Hawaiian stone artifacts, Chinese jade artifacts, plantation-era cast iron and missionary-era silver from the properties. “And then we were really surprised to find that organic materials like ivory and bone survived damaged, you know, maybe dried out and warped, but didn’t burn,” Kimberly Flook, an archaeologist and the deputy executive director of the foundation, told SFGATE.

The estimated cost to rebuild the historic sites is approximately $40 million, and the work is scheduled to take seven years. The foundation anticipates that about $31 million of the necessary funding will come from FEMA, Maui County, national park grants and individual donors. That leaves a significant chunk of change for the foundation itself to provide.

“Outside of just keeping the lights on and everything, we’re on the hook for at least $9 million to bring these buildings back,” Flook said. As I drive through Lahaina, I don’t see any new construction of commercial buildings, historic or otherwise.

As the sun dims over West Maui, I arrive at Lahaina’s Emerald Plaza outside the fire zone. A bright bulb sign spelling “Sale Pepe” shines over the Italian restaurant’s new location, which opened in 2025 a few miles from its former Old Lahaina Center location near Front Street. The restaurant’s return has been well received, with lines out the door.

The decision to reopen came after an outpouring of community support, co-owner Qiana Di Bari told SFGATE in an email. The restaurant did not own the building destroyed in the fire, but it hopes to return. “Our lease with The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation remains and is ready for our return when Front Street returns,” she said.

Right on the ocean, Front Street was lined with restaurants, boutiques and bars, some sitting atop concrete pilings over the water. Today, nothing has yet opened on that closed road, and for many business owners, frustration is mounting. 

Front Street Recovery, a coalition of 73 generational Lahaina landowners formed in 2023, has been helping members navigate permitting procedures. It’s also been advocating for changes to the rebuilding process, which so far has been putting Front Street buildings — many built before modern building codes — through a system of regulations that often conflicts with how they were originally built. 

One member of the group, Tristan Jones, owns the property that once housed the flagship oceanfront Cheeseburger in Paradise. She wants to rebuild but told SFGATE over the phone that “there’s a lot to jump through, and there’s really no clear path or really clear understanding that we would be able to rebuild.”

The process, she explained, could involve about 14 different permits, four public hearings and several committee meetings. “I’ve been told it could look like up to half a million dollars or more just to get through the permitting process,” Jones said, adding that there’s no guarantee of approval.

“It’s an uncertain, costly and, you know, emotionally and psychologically draining exercise to even think of those things,” she said.

On the opposite side of the road, businesses don’t have to worry about shoreline regulations, but Jones still calls the permitting process overall “pretty glacial,” leaving many owners stalled in early stages and even unsure if rebuilding is feasible.

“Most of the ownership on Front Street are multigenerational families or nonprofits that have been in the area for a long time, some Native Hawaiian families as well that have all been part of the community and really want that community back,” Warren Freeland, the fourth-generation owner of the historic Pioneer Inn, told SFGATE.

Freeland said he fully intends to rebuild the 1901 landmark and keep it in his family for generations. “We have not considered selling, and nobody has approached us about selling, and our focus is completely on rebuilding,” he said. “We’re literally starting the process today.”

He said the bigger hurdles he’s seen have been with getting all the approving authorities, like the state, county and federal government, on the same page. “Every property owner has its own path,” he said. There’s no blanket process or checklist, according to him.

Maui County Deputy Managing Director Erin Wade told SFGATE that priority has been given to residential rebuilding over commercial and that the construction of commercial properties is more complex.

“Permit requirements, zoning restrictions, infrastructure rules and coastal laws are layered in Lahaina’s historic district, where many commercial properties are located,” Wade said. “Further, in Lahaina and other older communities across the state, buildings do not meet modern zoning codes.” However, Wade added that “several businesses have building permits on Front Street and are preparing for construction.”

Architect Glenn Mason, who is working on four commercial projects in Lahaina, explained simply that setbacks in the rebuilding process are due to contradictory requirements, which have been forcing officials to revisit or rewrite certain laws or regulations.

His firm filed for a building permit for one property in June 2025 and received a response in April 2026 explaining that it needs an archaeological inventory survey. “There’s a lot of opacity about the process,” he said. He suspects that his other properties will need a survey done as well, but he’s still waiting for those letters.

“I am beyond frustrated by all of this, okay, but to be fair to the county … it’s just much more complicated than anybody ever visualized,” he said. “I think the county is trying to grapple with these things, but it’s just, bureaucracies are balkanized.”

He said he would not be surprised if rebuilding all of Front Street costs in the range of $300 million, and he believes that rebuilding Lahaina as a whole will happen on a much longer timeline than some people think.

“I think it will take 10 years [from 2023] for Lahaina to start to look like it used to look,” he said. “I mean, honestly, I think anybody who predicts anything faster than that is being unrealistic.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 10:45 a.m., May 14, to correct the year Sale Pepe opened.

Editor’s note: SFGATE recognizes the importance of diacritical marks in the Hawaiian language. We are unable to use them due to the limitations of our publishing platform.