Three years after fire destroyed most of Lahaina, the town is on the giving end. When Hurricane Lowell hit Kauai on September 7 and 8, knocking out power to more than 36,000 customers, roughly 90 percent of the island's utility, Lahaina residents organized a donation drive at 300 Lahainaluna Road the following weekend and planned to ship the supplies to Kauai by boat. Some of the people sorting boxes had lost their own homes in the August 2023 fire.

"Hawaii really showed up for everyone here after the fires and even still," Lahaina fire survivor Courtney Lazo told AsAmNews, "so it just feels only right to kōkua and do what we can." Kōkua means to help.

What happened on Kauai?

Hurricane Lowell passed west of Kauai as a Category 2 storm after peaking far stronger over open water, according to Direct Relief. Governor Josh Green's office reported more than 36,000 customers without power on Kauai, along with outages on Oahu and Maui, downed trees and utility poles across the island, and the destruction of the Port Allen small boat harbor. "There's a lot of damage on Kauaʻi and it's going to take quite some time to get back," Green said.

Nearly three weeks later, Kauai is still counting. As of the county's most recent figures reported by Kauai Now, residents had submitted 880 damage assessments, with 18 homes destroyed and 100 suffering major damage. Power has returned to much of the island, but restoration in remote Kokee is expected to take weeks. Direct Relief has reported three deaths linked to the storm, two on Kauai and one on Oahu.

Lowell was not the season's only blow. Hurricane Lala struck the Big Island about a month earlier, and Direct Relief notes that an El Niño pattern has fueled an unusually active Pacific season.

Lahaina's aid drive

The collection ran over a weekend at 300 Lahainaluna Road, with organizers planning to load the donations onto a boat for Kauai the following Monday. Volunteers ranged from fire survivors to teenagers. Pono Auweloa, 15, spent the day in the heat helping with his mother, Sandy. "I'd say it's pretty hot," he told AsAmNews, "but it feels good knowing I'm helping out people."

There is a particular weight to Lahaina doing this. The August 2023 fire killed 102 people and destroyed most of the historic town. For three years, the flow of help has run in one direction, toward Maui. Watching fire survivors pack supplies for another island is a reminder that in Hawaii, mutual aid is not a slogan. It is how communities that are far from the mainland and expensive to reach have always gotten through.

The real cost: disaster fatigue

Kenna Reed, founder of the Hawaii Mutual Aid Network, named the harder problem. Her network is supporting about 1,700 Lahaina families still recovering from the fire, and has taken on about 90 families affected by Hurricanes Lala and Lowell. Ninety families is small next to 1,700, she told AsAmNews, but it still means a community that will not be the same.

That math is the story underneath the aid drive. In three years, Hawaii has absorbed a catastrophic fire and, this season alone, two damaging storms. Each one draws on the same pool of donors, volunteers and nonprofit staff, many of them already stretched by the last emergency.

Funders are moving. The Hawaii Community Foundation has awarded about $287,000 to roughly 11 organizations responding on Kauai, according to Hawaii News Now, after more than $1 million for the Lala response. Malama Kauai has distributed $50,000 in grants and household gift cards of up to $2,000, since some banks on the island remained closed. Relief groups on Kauai have been clear about what helps most: cash, which reaches families faster than boxes.

But every new storm competes with the last one for attention. Lahaina itself knows what happens when the cameras leave. As we reported on the fire's third anniversary, Maui's slower crisis is outmigration, families priced off the island long after the rebuilding coverage ends. Kauai now faces the same risk: a burst of attention, then a long, quiet recovery that depends on whether anyone is still paying attention in six months.

How to help Kauai after Hurricane Lowell

Relief organizations on the island, including Malama Kauai and the Hawaii Foodbank's Kauai branch, have said monetary donations are the most useful form of help right now. The Hawaii Community Foundation is also directing grants to groups working on the ground. If you give, give to organizations rooted on Kauai, and consider giving again in a few months, when the need is still there and the headlines are not.

Lahaina already made that choice. A town still rebuilding from its own disaster decided that what it learned from being helped was that it should help back.