When Hurricane Dora passed to the south of the Hawaiian Islands in early August, it pushed in heavy winds and caused power outages in the area. The winds also fueled wildfires that burned more than 17,000 acres across several islands, including 2,170 acres on Maui, per the Hawai’i Emergency Management Agency, and virtually destroyed the town of Lāhainā. The fires, which began on August 8, are now the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century, surpassing the 2018 Camp Fire in California.
This week, Team Rubicon began activating local Hawai’i volunteers to assist with logistics, donation management, crowd management, traffic control, and more on Maui, and to ensure any disaster response work provided does not put more stress on an already heavily taxed community.
While local Greyshirts serve within their own community and work with local leaders, Team Rubicon continues to assess unmet needs for a larger response and recovery from the Hawai’i wildfires.
