October 2023 - The Massive Logistics Involved In Feeding Maui Fire Survivors

Red Cross Volunteer Tom Holowach shares his first hand experience involved with the Maui wildfires in the commentary as featured in Honolulu Civil Beat. This is the second of four Community Voices about his experience. The opinions expressed are not those of the American Red Cross or Civil Beat.

On the first night of camping out in the South Maui Community Gym in Kihei, I didn’t sleep. Rolling off the under-inflated air mattress onto the floor at 3 a.m. didn’t help. Like clockwork, lights blindingly snapped on at 6 a.m., sharp.

Some volunteers are already waiting for the shuttle, to take the long, slow drive from Kihei to Kaanapali for their shift starting at 7 a.m. I got a reprieve, because I was getting a ride from “L,” the girl I’m relieving, who had to drive down from Kula, where she stayed with family. They still have unsafe water there.

She described her process for what used to be known as a “Navy shower.” Get your hair wet. Stop the water. Shampoo. Rinse as fast as possible. Kill the water. Use conditioner and rinse fast, etc. Minimize your exposure because they still don’t know what chemicals are actually in the water Upcountry.

At the hotel, she led me down through the maze of stairwells and corridors, ending at a typical hotel breakout room. Three 6-foot rounds with tropical tablecloths had 10 chairs each. On the side tables, there were piles of donated clothes, organized by sex and size, along with diapers and baby stuff.

“L” had organized the myriad fliers about where to get aid, taped to the walls in categories; housing, schools, medical, veterans, financial assistance. Her challenge was that our site was off the radar.

We had a group of 50, who had first been rescued by their Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints church in Lahaina and checked in here. The Red Cross took over their care and contracted with the hotel to feed them three meals a day.

A feast from the local Tongans with intact houses: huge Dungeness crab accompanied by lamb ribs, corned beef hash and baked ulu. (Courtesy Tom Holowach)

They started to wander into our headquarters: a few kupuna in wheelchairs, younger couples with kids. All speaking Tongan. I have lived on Oahu for 26 years and have fairly good vocabulary in Olelo Hawaii. But I do not know a single word of Tongan. I did greet them with “Aloha!”

They escaped with just their lives and have almost nothing. They have rooms, and a debit card provided by the Red Cross for expenses. We help them put together some of the missing pieces we take for granted: the reading glasses and hearing aids left behind, the lost dentures and the glucose monitors.

The best ice breakers are the kids. They don’t know a stranger and they also speak English. Another volunteer arrived who was truly qualified to supervise the shelter. “K” is from Colorado, and he has worked 30 disaster recovery operations.

A former techie, he’s very organized and personable. He understands how to break the ice with his bad “dad” jokes and knows how to make friends with sullen, scared, keiki. And he doesn’t give up until they smile and laugh.

One of the massive logistics issues is feeding the survivors. Once families are moved from the group shelters to individual rooms, volunteers learn what the individual issues are, set up appointments for medical care or specific needs. After families moved into a room, the Red Cross contracted with each hotel that has food service.

The properties provide meals delivered in a typical meeting space. Our “breakout room” office has snacks and drinks, but that’s not meant to be food service. Our hotel serves food portions in cardboard containers in electric hotboxes.

The families often take their clamshell boxes and sit together here, like they are at home. Tonight, they all showed up together — which by itself is unusual — but they had no containers. Suddenly the door opened, and the feast arrived. A Tongan family who still had their house, brought in all their coolers.

When they took out the contents, “K” and I were blown away. They invited us to eat with them, which we usually don’t do because the Red Cross supplies meals for them, not us. Volunteers all support local restaurants, buying our meals there with our per diem. But this special night, we each got two plates.

One had corned beef hash from New Zealand, ribs of lamb and a quarter of a baked ulu fruit. The second plate: Majestically overhanging the edges of the 12-inch plate, claws taped with rubber bands, is the biggest, reddest Dungeness Crab I have ever seen.

Eating a whole crab is a messy process, so I look around the room, quickly realizing that we have no napkins, except for the manini one that comes wrapped up with plastic cutlery. We previously had paper towels for cleaning but ran out of them. Now we had 40 people, each with a crab dripping with juices, and no napkins.

We sat at with our new friends from Tonga and devoured the feast.

I ran up some side stairs to a small bathroom just above us, happy to find that they had the old school type of folded towels. I stuck my hand into the dispenser, grabbed a big stack and ran back downstairs, dividing it up into one pile for each table. Whatever it takes to assist our families. LOL!

We sat at with our new friends from Tonga and devoured the feast. Afterward, one of the elders stood up and started speaking in Tongan. It wasn’t a conversation, but felt vaguely serious, like a sermon. He finished and sat down, then another man stood up at another table, and did the same thing. I realized that it was a kind of witnessing, or testifying.

After six or seven men finished, one of the tutus stood and chanted a pule, after which they all sang a hymn, in Tongan, in beautiful four-part harmony. I glanced over at “K” and he had to keep wiping the tears leaking out of the corner of his eye. Yeah, me too.

How amazing that night was, especially for “K,” since he has never attended anything like this before. We had been accepted into their ohana. I know how lucky we were, compared to some of the many volunteers who are shepherding hundreds of people in some massive resort hotel.

On the way back to the gym that night, “K” said that this was easily the most amazing operation in which he had ever participated and would remember it forever. Considering this was my first, I would say I lucked out big time.

Back at the gym, the lights went out at 10 p.m. on the dot, and I slept very soundly, indeed.

Coming Wednesday: Falling through the cracks of FEMA’s benefits system.

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