Workers and equipment are being shipped to the island while officials plot how to carefully but quickly remove hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic debris.
Federal authorities are working with wary locals to negotiate significant logistical hurdles not found in the aftermath of blazes on the mainland United States, and they are attempting to navigate the delicate dynamics of disaster cleanup in a place as historically and culturally important as the ruined town of Lahaina.
“If you were on the mainland at another site, you’d be able to run through there with a bulldozer” and be ready to rebuild in just a few months, said Kaanapu Kalama-Jacobsen, a firefighter for the Federal Fire Department of Hawaii who is serving as a cultural adviser to the MauiIn the aftermath of a disaster, the cleanup phase is a crucial and often-overlooked step along the path to recovery.
Teams from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have been working to rid properties of dangerous or potentially poisonous items such as propane tanks, fertilizers and ammunition — the first phase of the cleanup. As of late last week, nearly half of the parcels had cleared Phase 1, according to anPhase 2 begins later and will involve the removal of larger debris, such as the remnants of house foundations and charred trees.
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