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The Maui wildfires, the worst disaster in our state’s history, were some of Hawaii’s darkest days. We lost more than 100 members of our ohana, witnessed the devastation of our former capital — Lahaina — and watched sadly the deep divisions in our community that emerged as outside attorneys and speculators descended upon our state.

During my tenure as governor, I faced one catastrophic disaster: Hurricane Iniki. While the destruction was not of the same magnitude as the Maui wildfires, Kauai was severely impacted.

What helped Kauai and our state to recover, however, was our community’s ability to unite in the difficult days and months after the disaster. Today, while we’ve seen an outpouring of aloha for the victims and their families, we’ve lost some of that unity as a community that has made us so strong in the face of past disasters.

This legislative session, our elected leaders have been challenged by the difficult decisions that face them following the Maui wildfires.

At the epicenter is our largest utility, Hawaiian Electric Co. Hawaiian Electric was founded in 1891 and chartered by the Kingdom of Hawaii, paving the way for Hawaii to adopt electricity at scale, well before most other places.

However, after turning on the lights for 133 years, the solvency of Hawaiian Electric is up in the air.

The Legislature is in its final days of considering three bills that concern the utility. Their decisions will not only affect the survival of HECO, but have far-reaching consequences for our state. It is time for us to unify once again post-disaster, this time around the survival of our utility.

The bills being considered are designed to give the utility the tools it needs to improve the safety and resilience of the grid, provide financial protection for everyone in the state in the event of a future catastrophic wildfire and reinforce the Public Utilities Commission’s role in deciding what investments by the utility are fair and reasonable to keep its operations safe and resilient.

Some are saying that the utility should be forced into bankruptcy. This would be a decision all of us in the state would regret for many decades to come.

Why?

In a forced bankruptcy, the people who win are outside-of-Hawaii investors looking to make quick money by picking up Hawaiian Electric stocks and bonds at bargain-basement prices and at the expense of the state, customers, employees, retirees and other stakeholders, as they did with Pacific Gas and Electric Company in California.

It’s unlikely these investors would have the same interest in fulfilling Hawaii’s goals to migrate off of fossil fuels and become energy independent, jeopardizing our decarbonization goals.

As one of the few remaining publicly traded companies based in Hawaii with local leadership committed to the community, it would shift its decision-making and center of gravity to outside the state. The steady drumbeat of loss of local control and probable loss of jobs would continue, further eroding our economic strength as a state.

Finally, a stable utility is critical to the Department of Defense and our national security. If the utility goes into bankruptcy, reliability and close collaboration with the military could diminish, impacting security and stability in the Pacific region.

Those who know me well have heard me talk about how Hawaii must, as set forth in the preamble to the Hawaii Constitution, control our own destiny, nurture the integrity of our people and culture and preserve the quality of life that we desire. All of us in Hawaii are bound by the love we share for this place and our ability to transcend our differences.

Let’s unify once again in our recovery efforts. Hawaiian Electric needs our state’s support: Hawaii’s energy independence, economic resilience and community strength hang in the balance.