Donations, volunteers pour into Red Cross fire shelters

Evacuees and volunteers watch a weather newscast on Wednesday at the American Red Cross shelter at Maui High in Kahului. The Maui News / ROBERT COLLIAS photos

KAHULUI — Desiree Sides may never have been more proud to be a Maui High School alum than she was Tuesday night at the Izumi “Shine” Maui Athletic Center.

Sides, the complex area superintendent for the Baldwin-King Kekaulike-Kulanihako’i-Maui High district and a 1986 Maui High graduate, was on the scene at the most-used shelter in Maui County as the community banded together to protect an estimated 2,000 evacuees.

“Amazing, call to action, any time that I need the support Maui High Principal (Jamie) Yap brings his team and they step up,” Sides said early Wednesday morning as she prepared to leave the facility where she had been all night. “I’ve had a couple of other of my complex area team come and it’s just phenomenal — I really appreciate everything that they’ve done.”

The scene was somewhat surreal and the show of the aloha spirit was powerful as more than 1,200 people registered their names with American Red Cross officials at the front door.

Hundreds of others slept in their cars in the jam-packed MHS parking lot.

Evacuees lay out on cots in the American Red Cross Shelter at Maui High in Kahului on Wednesday.

Pickup truck after pickup truck and car after car dropped blankets, pillows, sleeping bags, food, cases of bottled water — be they simply Good Samaritans or Maui County employees.

“My goodness, look at all this, all the water, I mean the food in there, it just kept coming throughout the whole evening and I anticipate that it’s going to keep coming and we’re going to rally for all those families that lost homes,” Sides said. “I know our community is going to come together.”

Sides had not received a status report on Kulanihako’i High School, the brand-new $245 million public school that opened its doors to students for the first time on Monday, although a look from the locked gate at the school on Wednesday morning showed no damage to the campus.

“You know, new school, I’m hoping and crossing my fingers, we just opened it for the students on Monday and they were very excited,” Sides said. “I did get a picture of where the water well is, but how far away that is, it’s hard to tell from a picture, but we’re being really hopeful.

“I’m hoping that it’s going to be positive news, but we’re going to have to rally together through this devastation.”

Sides said that the spirit of aloha sprang to life on Tuesday night at MHS.

“I absolutely agree, we always say ‘it takes a village to wrap around a student,’ and now we’re wrapping around our community,” Sides said.

Yap coordinated more than 10 of his MHS staff at the shelter to help the one American Red Cross volunteer who was there in the front of the gym for most of the night.

“They’ve been here pretty much all evening and working through the night,” Yap said. “Tomorrow we change shift and it will be other people here, the rest of us will be resting.”

The MHS shelter opened with a busload of Lahainaluna High School boarders arriving around 6 p.m. Tuesday. Strategy meetings in Athletic Director Mike Ban’s office were held periodically all night long.

“Then the word came that we were going to become a shelter and that’s when we canceled school for Maui High (Wednesday),” Yap said. “Red Cross was stretched thin, so we used Maui High people who wanted to help open the gym and open the shelter under the direction of our CAS Des Sides and Mayor (Richard) Bissen, so I think we’re doing OK.”

Yap said the effort stretched the shelter to capacity and beyond. Overflow parking was allowed on grass near classrooms to help accommodate the demand.

“We have people sleeping in their cars in the parking lot, some of them have tents,” Yap said. “We’re not a tent shelter, so they’re keeping in touch with them in their cars. We have tourists as well as local residents here, evacuating from Kihei and people from Lahaina and Upcountry, so we have a mix of people here.”

Yap was struck by the caring of community members who did not need to use the shelter.

“It started with a community member dropping off water and then the county guys were right after that,” Yap said. “Like, right now we’re watching the county drop off more either food or water. Now we’ve got cots, finally, for them to sleep on coming, so everybody is chipping in. This is a unique situation, nobody has ever experienced this before.”

Yap said at least one visitor who entered the shelter left for the airport after realizing they couldn’t stay and enjoy their vacation. One woman who was rescued from the ocean off Front Street in Lahaina was originally brought to the MHS shelter only to be taken for more treatment to Maui Memorial Medical Center.

“I feel real bad for these vacationers that came here for a good time and they’re stuck here in this shelter right now,” Yap said. “It is not just them being affected, it’s our local community that has been affected, so everybody’s chipping in and struggling at the same time. … It looks like we’re really organized for something that was thrown together.”

Yap said he could not be more proud of his staff. The effort was led by MHS administrators.

“That’s expected, but you know what wasn’t expected is I have had staff members volunteer, I’ve had teachers come in on their own time and share that they wanted to help, so they stopped by and helped,” Yap said. “Different staff members came at different times and really supported the whole effort.”

A ride in Yap’s golf cart around the packed parking lot showed one man preparing to go to sleep in the trunk of his car. He would only identify himself as “Wolf,” declining to provide a last name.

“Just trying to make the best of the situation,” he said.

Another stop in the parking lot showed the foursome of Justin Park and his wife Eugenia Park, visiting from California, and their friends Katie Lee and Jaemin Jim from Korea.

“We were staying at an Airbnb and our power went out, so we decided to just go down south, just to hang out in Kihei, just to avoid the (West Maui) area — it was already hard just to get out,” Justin Park said. “We left Lahaina around 10:30 a.m. and it was already super blocked out, there were so many re-routes going on, we didn’t even know if we were going to get on Highway 30.

“We made it out and we just stayed out the whole day. We were trying to make the best out of it, so we went to the beach, Makena. We thought about going back to Lahaina up north — like around the island — but we decided that was way too dangerous, especially at night and with the weather going on. So, we decided to opt out of that.”

Reid Yamamoto, a veteran Maui High teacher, said he was glad to help. Yamamoto shook his head at the outpouring of caring from the Central Maui community that was largely spared any of the fires’ devastation.

“It’s pretty amazing, people that you don’t even know, coming in donating blankets, pillows, food, bringing water, toilet paper, everything,” Yamamoto said. “It’s just amazing, the support that they’re giving people that have no homes right now. It’s crazy.

“People talk about this and that, but there’s still aloha left, here at least, I think. When the chips are down the real people come out and help each other. That’s human nature, it’s the human way, right?”

Ban was also clearly leading much the logistical demands of the shelter, almost just as he would for a Maui Interscholastic League basketball or volleyball game in his gym.

“It is heartwarming, there’s a lot of aloha in the islands, on Maui and everybody’s coming together,” Ban said. “There’s a lot of people donating towels, pillows, sleeping bags, food, water. The community is coming together, especially in a time of need like tonight.

“When there’s a need, then we come together and the community is strong and you can see the love and aloha for each other. And everybody is supporting each other, no matter what type of loss they had during this tragedy.”

* Staff Writer Rob Collias can be reached at rcollias@mauinews.com.

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