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None of it has ever made sense to Dora and Trip Millikin. 

Not the way the fires left their home eerily untouched, but reduced the rest of their neighborhood to ash and rubble. Not the way the inside of their house seemed so totally normal when they returned weeks later, the stench of rotting food the only sign that anything was amiss. Not the way their neighborhood remains totally devoid of construction sounds 16 months after the fire.

The only way the owners of Lahaina’s red-roofed “miracle house” have been able to process what happened — and cope with their feelings of guilt for having survived one of the most devastating wildfires in American history so unscathed — is to look for ways to help. 

Which is why last month, when an electrician told the couple they should light up their home for Christmas to provide a visible sign of hope to neighbors yearning to begin rebuilding, Dora quickly hopped into her car and headed to Home Depot. 

In the year since fires destroyed much of Lahaina, the Millikins have come to embrace the fact that their historic craftsman-inspired plantation home has significance to the wider community. That it no longer belongs just to them — if it ever did. They are the caretakers of something miraculous and they have to live up to what that means. 

This year, that meant hanging 1,000 LED Christmas lights and sparkling stars to bring light to a neighborhood cloaked in darkness. 

The effort feels a bit like that old Motel 6 slogan, according to Trip: “We’ll leave the light on for you.”

“We want our neighbors to come home,” he said. “So we’ll leave the light on until they do.” 

‘All By Ourselves’

People often drive by slowly to look at what is one of the few historical buildings left standing in Lahaina. The Millikins call them the “Looky-loos,” but they also understand why people need to gawk: The image of their red-roofed home standing untouched amid the war-like devastation of Front Street gained international attention in the days after the Lahaina fire. 

More: What Saved The ‘Miracle House’ In Lahaina?

The couple bought the plantation-era home, also known as the Pioneer Mill Co./Lahaina Ice Co. Bookkeeper’s House, in 2021 and spent more than two years meticulously restoring the century-old structure. 

Decisions made during the renovation — including installing a commercial-grade steel roof and replacing landscaping around the house with river stone —  likely played a role in saving it. But those decisions alone can’t explain why flames charred a single post and blistered the paint on one wall, but left virtually everything else alone.

Months after the fire, a local couple stopped by the house to tell the Millikins that after a desperate attempt to flee the area on foot, they spent the night in the field next to the house. They said they believed that ke akua — God — saved the structure. 

“They said there was no heat, there was no fire, there was no nothing. There was an oasis,” Trip said. “It really scared me to hear that.” 

The home required few repairs after the Aug. 8, 2023, fire. There was no smoke damage, just a little bit of soot on the window ledges on the east side of the house. The glazing on some of the windows had been damaged; a few other windows were smashed by emergency workers checking homes for fire victims. 

Electricity was restored in only five months, but it wasn’t until after the one-year anniversary of the event that the couple started easing back into living there.

Some nights, it feels like nothing has changed. The house smells the same. The ocean sounds the same as it laps against the shore near their bedroom. Yet every morning, when the couple gets up and walks out the front door, they are taken aback by the desolation surrounding them. 

It feels a little like “Little House On The Prairie,” Trip said. But lonelier. 

What was once a friendly and welcoming neighborhood of lush vegetation and a string of historic homes is now a desolate stretch of gravel-filled pits. There are no neighbors. No houses within sight. Only empty lots and the unfamiliar sight of a highway that had long been obscured by homes.

“It’s creepy,” Trip said, “because we’re all by ourselves.”

To be honest, the gregarious 65-year-old says, he feels more comfortable at the home he and his wife moved into 3 miles away in Launiupoko after the fires. But moving back to their home on Front Street is about something more than themselves. 

“We didn’t lose our house in the fire,” Dora said, “but we lost our community.” 

Moving back is a way to mitigate that loss. 

Hoping For Better Next Year

Soon after the fire, Dora and Trip began talking about how to use their eerie stroke of luck to help their neighbors. Maybe their home could become a gathering place, a refuge in the midst of what would surely become one giant construction site.

They haven’t been able to turn it into a community hub for neighbors rebuilding yet, because there is no rebuilding happening.

One neighbor, whose husband died in the fire, told the Millikins she doesn’t plan to rebuild at all. But most people the Millikins know are eager to return. Sixteen months after the fire though, not one of them has been able to get a building permit.

Many are seniors, facing a limited amount of time to wait to get home. The sense of despair is compounded for people who were underinsured and are relying on federal loans to rebuild.

Nearly two-dozen Front Street property owners wrote to Gov. Josh Green last month pleading for him to intervene on behalf of people whose shoreline homes were destroyed. Christine Ho and Dan Regan, who live just a few doors down from the Millikins, said in a letter that they were told by the county that the permitting process alone could take two years. 

Kirstin Downey Column: ‘It Needs To Look Like Lahaina Again’

Sporadic signs of life returning to the neighborhood buoy Dora. Plants have begun to grow on vacant lots. Birds have returned. One hearty neighbor moved into a trailer on his property a few blocks away. 

Once a week, a group of Front Street neighbors gather together to sit on a nearby seawall and look out at the ocean.

Trip and Dora are trying to give people more to come back to than a visit to a gravel pit. For the last few months they’ve been hosting small get-togethers for former neighbors. The dinners and sunset gatherings are a way to ease people slowly back into spending time in the neighborhood, they said.

“There’s something very special about this house,” Trip said. “We’re trying to use it as a way to bring closure and peace to our friends and neighbors.” 

On New Year’s Day, they plan to host a party for the people who once made this stretch of Maui such a friendly place to call home. 

There will be smoked ham to share, beautiful views to enjoy and likely a glass or two raised to the hope that next year their home will be surrounded by construction and their neighbors will have more to celebrate. 

Civil Beat columnist Kirstin Downey contributed to this report.

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