I’m winding up an extended stay in West Maui and ready, sort of, to confront cooler temperatures and a much colder ocean upon returning to our home in coastal mid-Santa Cruz County. In that fading light, I thought I’d offer a few updates on the economic/social/emotional conditions on the island.

First, reports that tourists are not welcome in Maui have been way, way overblown. Nor have I witnessed even one episode of local anger directed at tourists.

The cleanup efforts in Lahaina are mostly completed, and the first signs of new —construction are underway. Many of the streets within the destruction zone have been opened up, although people passing through are instructed to keep moving and not linger (or gawk).

A few other developments since my last report:

• Tree of life: The 151-year-old Lahaina banyan tree, a fixture near the still decommissioned Lahaina harbor, is continuing its comeback from fire damages, which, at first, were thought to have killed the popular tourist attraction.

• The adjacent Kamehameha III Elementary School, also destroyed along the oceanfront, has been set up in temporary, federal-government supplied modular units near the Kapalua Airport, some seven miles north of Lahaina. But earlier this month, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green announced plans are underway for a new site, just two miles from the former school site, on the makai (ocean) side of the Lahaina Bypass road above town and outside the impact area but again within the town.

• Maui households living below the poverty line have more than doubled since the wildfires, according to a new survey by University of Hawai?i Economic Research Organization. The August 2024 survey shows most fire-impacted households pay 43% more rent for the same or fewer bedrooms, and nearly one in five brings home less half their pre-wildfire incomes; 29% of fire-affected households now live below the poverty line, compared to 14% before the fires. Only about 70% of the survey participants who were employed in the tourism industry and less than half kept their full-time employment.

• Tourism: Although September and October visitors were observationally (by this author) up from a year ago, overall visitor numbers and spending remain sluggish since the wildfires. According to the most recent data from the Hawaii Tourism Authority, for June, the number of visitors to Maui was down 22% compared with June 2023. Visitor spending was down 27%, HTA reported.

I’ll end with a story about a house.

On one of my short trips through newly opened up Lahaina town I took the accompanying photo of the famous “Miracle House,” so named because the destructive wildfire passed it by along Front Street (it could also have been named the “Passover House”).

But the “miracle” was capricious, according to the owners of the 100-year-old, wooden, oceanfront home, Trip and Dora Millikin, who told NPR that the label makes them uncomfortable, because while their house was spared, their community was gutted.

The Millikins weren’t in Lahaina when the fire hit: they’d been visiting friends and family in Massachusetts. From some 5,000 miles away, they got live updates from friends who were on the ground, watching their neighborhood be destroyed. As more houses exploded into flames, their friends finally fled.

Then came the miraculous news their house had survived.

“Dora and I, the term is ‘survivor’s guilt,’ and we feel awful, just awful,” Trip Millikin told reporters.

“There was a neighbor who sent a note to us and said, ‘Oh, you won the lottery.’ And I almost wanted to throw up when I got that. I felt so badly, because these are my friends. These are my neighbors. And that’s all gone.” The couple told reporters they would volunteer in the recovery effort. “This is the place we love, and it’s home and we want to protect it.”

But what saved the house when everything else around it burned to the ground?

The commercial-grade corrugated metal roof the owners installed during renovations, a stone buffer area around the home and clearing vegetation around the perimeter were the primary reasons. “… and a lot of divine intervention,” Trip Millikin told NPR.

Lots around their home have now been cleared. When I went by the Miracle House, the front door was open, lights were strung across the entrance and the blue ocean sparkled in the background.

Don Miller is Santa Cruz Sentinel’s Opinion Editor.