Governor Josh Green, M.D., Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen and other officials addressed the public to provide important updates on the Maui wildfires, and responded to significant community concerns regarding the disaster recovery process.
“Like we saw in the pandemic, decisions we made can affect everyone across the islands. So what we’re saying now is travel should not be to West Maui. But the other parts of Maui are safe,” said Gov. Green. “And the rest of the state, of course, is also safe.”
“I’ll be making a much broader announcement and have a broader discussion about this on Friday in a statewide address. But we want people to travel to the state to the extent that they’re not impacting the hard work that these extraordinary people are doing (supporting disaster recovery),” the Gov. said.
“Also, I can tell you economic potential exists in great measure going forward in this district, in this region … I’m anticipating $500 to $600 million of added investment in some of the early cleanup and then there will be billions of dollars in reconstruction. And we also intend to do a public work program to hire local people, so that work comes and stays with our local people. A lot of money is going to be invested in Maui in a kind of an extraordinary way to relief efforts and that’s going to help us survive,” said Gov. Green.
In the short-term, Maui Mayor Richard Bissen said the newly-formed housing program to get displaced residents into hotel rooms and homes will also help.
“Because of governor’s work, and FEMA and Red Cross and everyone else here, those hotel rooms that normally would have been filled by tourists, is now filled by not only our local community, but those who have come here to help us,” said Bissen. “That will help with the economy, but of course people can also apply for Small Business Loans from the SBA. The governor is going to be having more folks come here to help us rebuild, and that’s going to require a lot of work with construction companies, contractors, and folks like us.”
Wednesday’s news conference was livestreamed on Maui Now’s Facebook page.
Elected officials and community leaders who provided crucial updates included Gov. Green, Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen; Maui Emergency Management Administrator Herman Andaya; Maui County Department of Fire and Public Safety Chief Brad Ventura; Maui Police Department Chief John Pelletier; Dual Status Commander of Joint Task Force-50 Brigadier General Stephen Logan; Red Cross Vice President of Disaster Operations and Logistics Brad Kieserman, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Incident Commander Steve Calanog.