������Ƶ

While living with Afghans in 2012 and during his six other deployments in the Middle East, Col. Jesse Curry immersed himself in their culture and learned skills that have been invaluable during his six months commanding the Army Corps of Engineers’ fire recovery mission on Maui.

In those farflung countries he said he learned to listen before he spoke and “to wait to be welcomed into someone’s special place or culture before inserting himself.”

“It’s just recognizing that it’s not about me as a commander,” he said in an interview last week before boarding a plane back home. “It’s about them, and our ability to help them.”

That was the mindset of Curry, who earned a Bronze Star and many service and valor medals in war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, when he landed at Kahului Airport on Aug. 27 to serve a devastated town that had lost at least 101 people in the Aug. 8 fires and thousands of homes and buildings.

While county officials welcomed the much-needed expertise of the Corps, Curry and his team received a frosty reception from many of the fire survivors whom they had come to help.

Misinformation spreading by word of mouth and on social media, especially falsehoods about land grabs, fueled further skepticism about federal assistance by many people who for generations have been distrustful of federal agencies.

But on Thursday, Curry left Maui after a celebration at the Lahaina Civic Center with many of those once distrustful people. Mayor Richard Bissen, who thanked him for being “so honest with the community,” presented him with a wood carving shaped like the Valley Isle.

It was the last of the numerous community meetings across the island in which Curry provided information, answered questions and listened to gripes and concerns.

Just hours before he would get on a plane to return to his home in Illinois and reunite with his wife and five kids, Curry told Civil Beat that a turning point came as “our promises turned into reality.”

Over the past half year, West Maui residents saw the Corps’ work in action, with the clearing of fire debris, ash and recyclables from 168 residential properties so far, and the building in 95 days of a temporary school by the Kapalua Airport to serve the 600 students whose King Kamehameha III Elementary School on Front Street was destroyed in the fire.

The Corps, which designed the school complex of 336 modular units across 38 buildings and oversaw its infrastructure and installation, turned the keys over to the Hawaii Department of Education on Wednesday.

“It’s been easily the most special construction project I’ve ever been a part of,” he said.

While he is saddened that he won’t be able to see the kids’ faces when they start classes there on April 1, he said he will return to Maui with his family to visit.

“When I do, people are going to wonder who’s that weird guy parked in the parking lot just standing and staring at the beautiful school,” he said.

The Corps’ biggest task in the recovery is overseeing the current phase 2 of the fire debris removal. On Jan. 15, the last hazardous tree was removed in Kula to complete the debris removal in Upcountry, and the work began in Lahaina.

The Environmental Protection Agency oversaw phase 1 of the debris removal, which included the removal of hazardous household material. For health and safety reasons, the EPA did not need permission of the property owners, but the Corps does to do its work.

“The community started very suspicious of the right of entry, and it took some time to explain and answer their questions and address their concerns,” Curry said. “We tried to reiterate over and over again that it’s still your property, it’s still your land.”

He said with the support of community leaders about 90% of residential property owners have now provided permission.

Kekai Keahi, a longtime critic of government over water rights, spoke at the Wednesday meeting “to try to put people’s minds and hearts to rest” by recounting what he sees on his daily drives through the burn zone.

“We see the big machines going in there, but what people don’t see is the people with gloves and buckets, on their knees, picking up small stuff that machines can’t get,” he said. “These people are working hard, for real, for you folks.”

Keahi added: “I think this is the way we got to go. Together with the government and the community, we can move a lot faster and get a lot farther.”

Curry said the Corps, EPA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency collectively recognized from the start the importance of the culture and history of Lahaina, the former capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

“If we didn’t do the hard work at the beginning to embrace the culture and not just say that we care about your culture, but actually demonstrate at the beginning that we were putting our words into action, then it would be even more impossible to gain that trust over time,” Curry said.

All Corps members working on the recovery mission on Maui go through a two-hour cultural training. On Saturday, Curry’s replacement Col. Eric Swenson and 18 new team members were the latest to do so, led by Mehana Hind, senior adviser to the CEO of the .

The Corps has hired cultural monitors for its debris removal and awarded the $53.7 million contract to build the temporary school to , a Native Hawaiian company.

Behind the scenes, the Corps’ third main task in the recovery is designing and overseeing construction of group housing. Design has been completed for two property options in West Maui, and now Curry said the Corps is waiting for FEMA to negotiate a lease with one of them.

Curry initially was scheduled to lead the Maui recovery field office for just six weeks, but it didn’t take long after he saw the destruction for himself to know he had underestimated how long he would need to stay.

“We needed to get things to a steady state so that the operational parts had the big hurdles, the big challenges, the things that would be showstoppers, resolved and out of the way,” he said.

One of the biggest hurdles was getting the temporary debris site built and operational in Olowalu. There were protests and community outcry about the location due to its proximity to the ocean and other environmental concerns. Many people are still worried.

“The reality is that it’s the most robust (temporary debris site) that we’ve ever built,” he said. “We have full confidence that site is well beyond the necessary capability to protect the environment.”

Curry said his replacement’s biggest challenge will be the commercial debris removal, which is more complex than residences and will require demolition of some large buildings.

Swenson commands the St. Paul District of the Corps, where he said he is surrounded by Indigenous communities and reservations where tribal life in Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin affords some similarities to the Hawaiian culture.

And like Curry, Swenson said he learned during his Iraq deployments to listen twice as much as he talks.

“I oftentimes had to drink 10 cups of tea and tell stories and listen to stories for hours before we could get down to the brass tacks in the business,” Swenson said. “The investment in time and relationship building ultimately bears the fruit you need to help them rebuild their country. That’s absolutely the skill set I need to be successful here on Maui.”

Curry said he had little time to enjoy Maui, working about 12.5 hours a day, 7 days a week during his deployment.

But on his last day on Maui, he shared with his team that for the first time in six months he dipped into the ocean at about 5:15 a.m. that morning, after his daily morning workout and while it was still dark.

“I had a lot of people advise me that it was important to do that because of everything that is a part of this mission and everything that weighs on us,” he said. “They said: ‘Go into the ocean, get your head underwater and let this place help cleanse you of that.’”

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.