For perspective on what Lahaina lost in its August 8 – 9 fire, NAP turns to “Six Months in the Sandwich Islands” (1874):
“I HAVE been spending the day at Lahaina at Maui. … Lahaina is thoroughly beautiful and tropical looking, with its white latticed houses peeping out from under coco palms, breadfruit, candlenut, tamarinds, mangos, bananas, and oranges, with the brilliant green of a narrow strip of sugar-cane for a background, and above, the flushed mountains of Eeka, riven here and there by cool green chasms, rise to a height of 6000 feet. Beautiful Lahaina! It is an oasis in a dazzling desert, straggling for nearly two miles along the shore, but compressed into a width of half a mile. It was a great missionary centre, as well as a great whaling station, but the whalers have deserted it, and missions are represented now only by the seminary of Lahainaluna on the hillside. An old palace, the remains of a fort, a custom-house, and a native church are the most conspicuous buildings. The stores and dwellings of the foreign residents… the light frame house… shaded by candlenut and breadfruit, looks as seemly… as in far-off Massachusetts. …
“Everything was fervent, redundant, beautiful. …” — Isabella Bird
The State of Washington provides this one-stop site for disaster relief:
https://give.wa.gov/cfd/Disaster-Relief-Center
