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Our society is stuck in a place between hope and despair. There’s a cleaving in how we see the world and our place in it. Are we living in a world of abundance and possibility? Or are we living in a time of scarcity and decline?

We’ve been grappling with this question in the year after the fires killed 102 people on Maui and displaced thousands.

I’ve covered disasters, wars and genocides in my career and I’ve been able to maintain an overall sense of optimism despite witnessing depravity and hopelessness.

But like so many of us, I’ve been struggling to feel optimistic and hopeful for Maui this past year. 

What happened shouldn’t have happened, and so many of the people of Maui valiantly responded.

However, I can’t shake the feeling of hollowness in the way we’ve collectively responded to the loss of Lahaina. Yes, we opened up our hearts and were generous with our contributions, but the devastation on Maui was immense, and even $4 billion won’t come close to solving the problems. 

So many things went wrong and so little has happened to make things right.

The communities on Maui and Molokai responded quickly and bravely and Lahaina Strong persisted to create a significant policy change on vacation rentals, but a year after the immediate pledges to rise stronger from the ashes, Maui and Hawaii are still profoundly broken.

We are no more secure and safe, and the leaders who have made those pledges have failed us. Yet, what’s broken here isn’t beyond repair. We just don’t have the right craftspeople wielding the proper tools at this moment. 

We know the truth that the dead and displaced were failed by Hawaii’s physical and human infrastructure. We weren’t ready or resilient. 

In the wake of the fire, Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke told the ugly truth: We were unprepared. 

Sadly, that’s still the case. 

The fire that destroyed Lahaina was not the last wildfire. We’ve had fire after fire after fire. We know more fires will come and the waters will rise. 

We had people who stepped up and offered a different way of solving our problems. However, they weren’t supported and too many of them have stepped away.

I’ve talked with too many akamai people with generational ties to Hawaii who feel fed up and forsaken by the system that has been in place here for decades. 

Right now, Hawaii’s fate is to be the province of the ultra-wealthy, retirees and the low-wage earners that serve them. That path ultimately serves no one.

Hawaii isn’t sustainable in our current version of capitalism that favors individual profit over greater good for all. Hawaii has been an American political, economic and ideological outpost in the Pacific hemisphere and the land and people have suffered for it. 

We are an ecosystem out of balance. We need less greed and individualism and more sharing and community. 

Saturday is an election day, but change in Hawaii isn’t going to happen at the ballot box. The system hasn’t served the people. It’s no wonder that many of our best and brightest can’t be bothered to fill public servant roles. The roles are in service of a system that hurts Hawaii. 

I want to have hope. We need to have it. While a thousand students are no longer in Lahaina schools, there are thousands of kids still on Maui. 

I can’t shake the idea that there are young people who grew up in Lahaina who are going to get chased from Hawaii as a result of the fires. 

Not enough was done to keep families on Maui and in Hawaii and the exodus has been profound. Even before the fires, people were leaving for economic opportunities elsewhere. We’ve had generation after generation that have found lives outside of Hawaii, but that also means that there are generations that are dying far away from Hawaii. 

I’m haunted by the words of researcher : “I don’t want to die away from my homeland.”

When I think about Lahaina decades from now, I’m worried about the young person who grew up on Maui, survived the fires and has then found a life outside of the islands and never returned to Hawaii Nei. 

I think about this because that’s what happened to my father. He watched his Hawaiian town, Hilo, be destroyed by the tsunami in 1960. He was soon to leave and never to live there again. 

His life after Hilo was a happy one, but he wanted to return to live in Hawaii and never did. Can we now create a Hawaii where locals and natives can build stable and secure lives and communities? 

I am hopeful for Maui and Hawaii because time hasn’t run out. We can fix our broken islands if we create shared visions that benefit many, not just a few. We’ve done it in the past and we need to do it for the generations to come.

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