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For more than a year, a woman who lost everything in the Lahaina fire has been tending a budding garden at the makeshift memorial overlooking the burned town.

Susie Richter loads two five-gallon jugs and three two-gallon jugs of water in the back of her truck for her daily trip to the memorial along the Lahaina Bypass south of Lahainaluna Road — a spot consumed by flames in August 2023.

“I feel like I’m doing good for the community just as much as I am for myself,” Richter said.

“There is a roller-coaster of emotions, especially in the beginning, but I think it helps. Sometimes you just have to let it out,” said Richter, who counts friends and co-workers among the 102 people killed in the blaze.

“I would talk to my co-worker Danilo, and say, ‘I miss you, buddy, I wish you were here, watch over us.’ And then my old roommate, Frank, they just put his picture up recently. So, I say their names and that makes me heal and remember, and it’s almost like they’re here.”

Richter had rented a home in Wahikuli for 23 years. When she first moved in, her landlords were celebrating their grandson’s first baby luau.

“He is now graduating college, so I kind of have been there for a generation,” Richter said. “I lost everything.”

On Lahaina’s northern edge, Wahikuli was among the last areas to burn — Richter didn’t evacuate until 10 p.m. Before that, “I just saw a glow, but I had no idea of the extent of it and what happened, and the horror.”

More than 40 of the victims died while trapped at Kuhua Camp near the historic Lahaina Mill Smokestack, Richter’s neighborhood before she moved to Wahikuli.

Now, a portrait along the memorial’s fence commemorates each person confirmed dead. Flowers adorn more than 100 white crosses. A garden that started small keeps growing with succulents, potted plants and, recently, a few trees, too. There’s also a small memorial for the pets who were lost.

On Aug. 7, the day before the fire’s anniversary, a small group congregated at the memorial and spoke aloud the names of the people they lost.

Richter spoke the name of one of the victims, Dale Ann Richter, who she thinks was her cousin — one she’d never met.

“I don’t know if she had anybody to represent her,” she said, “so I said her name.”

How The Memorial Began

Richter is one of a handful of locals who have worked long hours on the memorial.

The idea was conceived eight days after the fire. Richter’s friend, Shawneen Schweitzer, was helping her three sons organize distribution hubs but soon realized the job was too big for her. Then another friend, Sunya Schlea, suggested a memorial to give the grieving community a place to gather.

Randy Clark proposed putting the memorial by the Lahaina Bypass. At the time, President Joe Biden was scheduled to pass through that area during his visit to the disaster scene.

Schweitzer got her husband, Matt Schweitzer, and their friend, Soakai Taufa, to join the effort. Taufa had access to a pile of scrap white wood left at a construction site. Soon, the group had built more than 100 crosses. They also made 2,000 yellow ribbons to match the estimated number of people missing at the time.

Schweitzer said they were not quite sure how the community would react to seeing the row of crosses lining a busy road, especially just two-tenths of a mile from where a downed power line ignited the fire.

“But it’s also where you can stand and see all of Lahaina,” Schweitzer said. “You have the perfect vantage point of all the destruction from the fire from one spot. And so it was the perfect location.”

Doubts about community acceptance quickly dissipated. As they were putting up the crosses, drivers would honk and flash shakas. Some pulled over and offered to help. Then people started to bring flowers and leis to drape over the crosses.

“By the time the president came Tuesday morning, we had 106 crosses up, and we had all the yellow ribbons to signify the missing people from the fire,” Schweitzer said.

The drying flowers could have become a fire hazard, so Schweitzer started encouraging people to bring plants. The garden has been expanding ever since. Schweitzer, Schlea, Katy Ondatje, Nancy Cross and others meet monthly to do a major cleanup.

Steve Molina lost three aunts to the fire, Schweitzer said, and was “miserable.” He started bringing hundreds of small succulent plants. Susie Richter, she said, “was doing all the watering of all the plants that were coming in every day — and she still continues to do it.”

“Our community has really embraced this site,” Schweitzer said.

Taufa created a 15-foot-tall sculpture resembling a tear drop with a heart in the middle, titled Teardrop of Lahaina, that was unveiled during the fire anniversary observation. He also lost friends to the fire.

“I want the whole world to remember this tragedy,” Taufa said. “We lost a lot of friends, a lot of community members. I don’t want them to forget about those people.”

Pondering Other Memorial Sites

Taufa said his sculpture is something of a first draft. He is trying to secure a more permanent location for a final version.

“When I find a spot, I will build it out of rocks,” he said. 

Kamehameha Schools, formerly known as Bishop Estate, owns a 1,137-acre tract of agricultural land around the memorial. It has been improving a small area next to it with plans for a 6.5-acre heritage site that will be developed in phases.

Taufa said he had a couple meetings with Kamehameha Schools’ representatives, and is “fighting real hard” to move his sculpture and the entire memorial to the adjacent land because the current location is difficult for kupuna and keiki — the elderly and children — to traverse.

But the heritage site is not intended to be a memorial, Crystal Kua of Kamehameha Schools said Thursday.

“We believe that the establishment of a memorial is a discussion that should be led by the greater community and government,” Kua said.

Taufa also heard there is a push for his sculpture to be moved to a potential memorial on Front Street. He said no one from the county administration has talked to him about that.

The county has not responded to requests for comment from Civil Beat.

‘This Is Lahaina Right Here’

Every time Richter goes to the memorial, there is something new. She estimates 25-30 people visit daily, some just to see it and others come to leave plants or flowers.

A wooden bench offers a place to rest, but Richter wishes the county would donate a couple more benches and make the pathway along the fence safer for visitors.

Recently, the county declared the water in Lahaina safe and took away two water trucks it had placed at the nearby resource center, where Richter had been filling her water jugs.

Now she gets the water at a neighbor’s house. During a recent community meeting in Lahaina, she asked Mayor Richard Bissen to bring the trucks back. The water might be safe but many still don’t have access to it, she said. Bissen said he would bring the issue to the Department of Water Supply.

As Richter slowly walks through the memorial, she remembers some of the victims. There is a 14-year-old boy, a co-worker who perished with his mother inside a car, a friend who tried to save the family dog, a woman she used so see around town, a talented chef.

Like Taufa and the others who maintain and add to the memorial, Richter hopes it will become permanent.

“This is Lahaina right here,” Richter said. “These people are Lahaina. We should honor them because they are now going to watch over us.”

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