Ford: In the aftermath of wildfire, Maui needs tourists more than ever

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Price of a loaf of 12-grain bread: $8.29.

Price of a gallon of standard fuel: $4.70.

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Price of a Mai Tai topped with foam and a slice of pineapple: $18.

Price of a Hawaiian winter trip in Maui: priceless. (After all, that’s in American {dollars}.)

What’s a refuge from winter for a lot of western Canadians is, this yr, palpably completely different. Final August’s wildfires that destroyed the city of Lahaina have had a lingering impact on the life and economic system of the island, at the same time as most of this tropical paradise stays unscathed.

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It is a massive island; Lahaina, for all its historical past, is a small city — a regal one, however with a inhabitants of about 10,000 it ranks with vacationer cities resembling Canmore or Sylvan Lake.

Maui nonetheless stays a paradise; it nonetheless presents the identical vacationer inducements from boogie boarding to late afternoon boat journeys to observe the whales, which come to the nice and cozy Pacific Ocean waters to beginning and practice their younger. It by no means will get outdated — not the ritual of blowing the conch at sundown to the posh of cocktails on the garden when house is buried in snow.

However beneath all of it is the fact that the traditional city of Lahaina — the capital of the Hawaiian monarchy — is in ruins. All of the “Lahaina Sturdy” placards can’t disguise the truth that this yr is completely different. Seven months later, the cleanup of poisonous waste continues slowly. Gawkers and vacationers are barred from the city. The island’s official web site states why: “The impacted space and its environment are hazardous with unstable buildings and sharp metallic objects and ash with probably poisonous substances.”

There’s loads of blame for the wildfire tragedy to go round. Within the New York Occasions, the federal government is criticized for “failure to adequately warn residents in time for them to evacuate.” The human toll; 101 useless. But, because the Occasions reported, there have been 17 calls to emergency within the first minutes of the flare-up. There was minimal response.

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Residents who misplaced each properties and jobs are nonetheless being housed in accommodations; the city continues to be a charred break and there was little excellent news to bolster spirits. That the traditional and iconic banyan tree — a shady umbrella over a fundamental park in Lahaina that was scorched black, continues to be alive was value a front-page {photograph} in The Maui Information. It softened the information that greater than 25,000 bushes within the city forest have been killed by the flames.

Why ought to this matter to Canadians? As a result of these of us in Alberta and British Columbia know the devastating results and lingering trauma following wildfires which have destroyed entire communities. (For Calgarians, think about if Canmore was destroyed by fireplace. Think about the price, the heartbreak and the fury if no public emergency warning was issued instantly and residents have been burned alive of their properties and vehicles.)

In contrast to Lahaina, certainly in contrast to Maui, we have now numerous economies, we aren’t depending on a single supply of earnings — even the place a lot of our prosperity depends upon the oil and fuel sector.

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Maui will not be that fortunate. Its financial prosperity depends upon tourism.

It wasn’t all the time so. The annual migration of humpback whales made it an financial powerhouse till the whaling trade collapsed. Each sugar cane and pineapple bolstered the native economic system. The sugar processing manufacturing facility nonetheless exists, however it’s rusted and has not produced sugar for greater than 25 years. The closest it comes is the sugar museum. All of the sugar is imported.

You should purchase pineapple all over the place, however it’s now not an agricultural staple. The whole lot depends upon us — largely the guests who dwell in chilly climates like Alaska, Washington and Western Canada.

Understandably, some guests at the moment are going elsewhere, both out of respect or confusion in regards to the extent of the tragedy. However right here’s the issue: with out vacationers, Maui will starve.

Britain’s Impartial newspaper asks, “Maui’s economic system wants vacationers. Can they go to with out compounding wildfire trauma?”

With each Hawaii’s governor and Maui County’s mayor urging vacationers to return, the reply is a convincing “sure.”

Catherine Ford is an everyday Herald columnist.

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