When the fire burned through Lahaina in 2023 it also burned up people's memories of this place (including my own and my children's). However, it likely wasn't as bad for us as for people who are very old and who survived this fire who for them Lahaina was everything they knew since they were born there.
For me, likely it wasn't as bad because I didn't physically live in Lahaina I lived instead in Hana and Paia on the other side of the island when I lived there in 1989 and 1990.
But, Lahaina was where we went to have a more city kind of experience where there were restaurants and the Banyan Tree and the harbor where many tourist types of boats where and where my children could go to a movie theater and maybe eat at the Pioneer Inn across from the Banyan Tree which was really nice then too.
Or go to Lappart's ice cream on the corner near Pioneer Inn and the Banyan Tree and get a coconut Ice Cream Cone on a sugar waffle cone or something like this.
So, I can sort of live with the loss more than most people who grew up there because Lahaina was a little for us like Going to an Island Disneyland more than anything else at that time with all the history and a movie theater and the Pioneer Inn and all the Tourist Traps of various kinds. It sort of in it's own way reminded me of an International Carmel in California type of Tourist trap but a really fun one out in the middle of the ocean on Maui instead of on the mainland.
However, the cost of labor and materials to rebuild Lahaina now is almost impossible compared to the Mainland of the U.S. where Construction costs of materials and labor would be more manageable. Also, most people who lived in Lahaina before the fire would not have been considered rich but people who had lived there and watched their modest homes become worth millions of dollars because of all the people that wanted to move there from all over the world because of it's quaintness.
But, all that is gone now because basically it is cost prohibitive to rebuilt Lahaina (at least the way it once was). So, the old Lahaina is likely gone now forever to be replaced with? Who knows what?
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