Lahaina, Maui After Hurricane Lala... New Drone Tour!!!

Aloha everyone. So today is the first day after Hurricane Lala passed over Maui, and I've been getting a lot of people asking me how Lahaina fared through the storm. Well, instead of just telling you, I figured I would show you. So we're going to get the drone up in the air, and I'm going to give you a full aerial tour of Lahaina town. And I'll share the most recent updates regarding the progress being made in the rebuild, now that it's been more than three years since the fire. Let's jump right into it. For this tour, we're going to start at the Lahaina Harbor, and we'll work our way north. As you can see, they're still working on the dredging project at the Lahaina Harbor. And of course, everybody is curious how did the banyan tree fare during the storm. As we fly over it right now, you're going to see that it looked like it did just fine. We're now flying over Front Street, right in the middle of the commercial district. Now, I wish I had better news to report for the commercial district, but we actually took a step backwards since my last update. You see, back on July 1st, Maui County held a press conference and issued a press release stating that five commercial properties had received their permits. Since then, county officials have come out and clarified that those five properties received historic district approval, not building permits. I did speak with a few of the county officials myself, and they explained that the confusion stemmed from their excitement to share with the community that the properties that they've reviewed so far will all honor Lahaina's previous historic characteristics. And it really did sound like an honest miscommunication. But the bottom line is, at the time of recording this video, there are still zero building permits issued for commercial properties along Front Street. That being said, the first business did open up in this area, and we're coming up on it now. If you look closely, you'll see a red food truck in the church's parking lot. The name of the food truck is Front Street Fresh. Make sure you come down and support them if you're in the area. We're now flying over the first two residential homes on the ocean side of Front Street, and as you can see, they've made significant progress in their rebuilding already. Okay, we're now approaching Baby Beach. From here, we're going to follow the coastline all the way to the far north end of Front Street before we explore some residential neighborhoods like Wahikuli, Lahaina Luna, and then finishing up in the Puamana neighborhood. You're actually going to see that there's a $350 million yacht anchored just off the shore of Puamana. Stick around to the end of the video, and I'll tell you exactly who owns that yacht. We're now passing the Lahaina Johto Mission and coming up on Mala Wharf. It did get very windy in Lahaina as the storm passed by. I do know some people that had property damage to their roof, and driving through town, I did see a lot of fences and trees blown over, including one of the trees in the backyard of my house at Kohoma Village. But overall, I'd have to say it's not too bad, especially compared to some of the damage in towns on the Big Island. We're now crossing the Kohoma Stream and coming up on the Cannery Mall area. On the ocean side of Front Street, we're going to pass by the old Lahaina Luau and several restaurants that have been open since right after the fire. Okay, we're now coming up on a more residential area of Front Street, and as we continue to explore more residential neighborhoods, let's talk about the progress that's being made in the rebuilding of residents' homes. All of this information is provided on the Maui Recovers website, so you can always go check it out on your own too if you'd like. According to the website, as of August 13, 2026, there's now been 267 single-family homes completed. Now, the site just recently started including information on the number of multifamily units that have been completed as well, and so far there's been 313 multifamily units completed. And when you add the single-family units to the multifamily units, there's now been a grand total of 580 residential units completed. We're now flying into the Waihekuli neighborhood, and this is an area where we're going to see a lot of progress in the rebuilding of single-family homes. By the way, if you appreciate these video updates, please make sure to hit the like button for me, and subscribe if you aren't already. I'm always surprised to look at the analytics of my channel and see that 90% of the people that watch my videos aren't subscribed, and subscribing really is one of the best ways to support the channel. Okay, now that we've reached the end of the Waihekuli neighborhood, we're going to spin around and head back a little bit further up the hillside this time. On the left-hand side of the screen, above the Waihekuli neighborhood, you'll see a bunch of colorful buildings with white roofs. Those are some of the temporary tiny homes that were used to house fire victims until they were able to rebuild. Now, when it comes to the rebuilding of both homes and businesses, one of the things that I think is really holding up progress is another delay in the distribution of the $4 billion in the Lahaina Wildfire Settlement, which fire survivors have been waiting for for more than three years now. And this time, it's being delayed by some of the attorneys that are representing the clients. You see, typically in mass disaster lawsuits like this, attorneys will work on a contingency basis, meaning that they take a percentage, usually around 25% of the final payout. And for a $4 billion settlement, that means that the attorneys were poised to collect roughly $1 billion. However, in early June, Maui's Judge Peter Cahill issued an order significantly capping those legal fees, noting that many fire survivors won't be made completely whole by this settlement. Judge Cahill ruled that taking a billion dollars away from the victims was unfair. But unfortunately, one of the law firms representing fire survivors has appealed Judge Cahill's ruling. Now, I kind of would have expected this from one of the mainland law firms, but what surprised me was that the law firm that decided to appeal is a local Maui law firm. Okay, so we just flew over the Cannery Mall parking lot. We're coming up on the Kohoma Stream again, and on the other side of the stream is Kohoma Village. Now, Kohoma Village was mostly unharmed during the fire, with the exception of a few townhome buildings and one single family home. But as you can see, all of the townhomes have now been rebuilt, and they have been for quite some time. And as we cross over Kanui Street, we'll be flying over the lot that used to hold front street apartments. The front street apartments were affordable rentals, and it sounds like they'll start the rebuilding process soon. We're now flying alongside Waine'e Street, and we're coming up on the area that held the outlets of Maui. We're actually going to be flying right over the top of the proposed site for the new temporary marketplace called Ulu'olele. County officials did say that they expect to open the new temporary marketplace by September or October of this year, but now that we're halfway through August already, and it doesn't look like they've even started anything yet, it looks like the earliest would be October. We're now flying over the McDonald's building and coming up on Lahainaluna Road. We're going to follow Lahainaluna Road up into the Lahainaluna neighborhood to see what kind of progress they're making there. We're crossing over the Hono'opilani Highway, and on the left-hand side of the screen, you see the Pioneer Mill smokestack. Lahainaluna is another neighborhood that has made a lot of progress in the rebuilding of residential homes, and that'll be especially apparent when we reach the top of the hill and turn around and come back down the hillside. Another thing that can potentially impact the speed of recovery here in Lahaina is our politics. In particular, I know a lot of people will be paying attention to who will be elected as our next mayor. Well, just a couple weeks ago, Maui held its primary elections. A total of 10 candidates threw their hat in the ring to try to become Maui's next mayor, but after the primary, only the top two vote-getters move on to the general election in November. So it's going to come down to Maui's current mayor, Richard Bisson, who will be running against a current county council member, Yukilei Sigimura. Now that we're near the top of the burn zone, we're going to turn around and head back down the hillside. And as we head down, we're going to be flying over the Kahoma Homes neighborhood, where you're going to see what I think is the highest concentration of single-family homes having already completed construction. This neighborhood looks like it's almost complete already. And back to the discussion about who will be Maui's next mayor, I do think that there's going to be a lot of people who will be watching what happens to Lahaina's commercial district between now and November's election. I've heard a lot of people express frustration over the pace of rebuilding businesses in Lahaina town. The current administration is promising that there will soon be several building permits issued for the businesses along Front Street, but that's yet to be seen. And I've also heard people argue that we shouldn't be switching mayors in the middle of the rebuilding process because it might slow things down. But I'm really curious to hear what all of you think. Let me know in the comments who you think should be Maui's next mayor. Straight ahead is the Opakea at Lahaina condominium complex. We're going to fly over that in a second, but first we're going to turn and take a quick look at the Ho'onanea townhome complex. Ho'onanea did lose a few of the buildings in the fire, but it looks like they're making pretty good progress on the reconstruction. And now we're going to hop back across the stream to go take a look at the Opakea condo complex. Now just like Ho'onanea, Opakea did lose a few buildings in the fire, but they're also well underway with pre-construction. And it looks like they've even started to rebuild the pool and clubhouse. The empty lot on the left-hand side of the screen is where the Minds Eye interior building was, and on the right-hand side of the screen before the intersection is where Taco Bell and Pizza Hut were located prior to the fire. At the end of this cul-de-sac is where you would have found the sugar cane train food truck park. This is also the area where you would have found the pawn shop and the dive bar that was called the Sly Mongoose. And now we're flying over an area that held a brewery and a strip mall. And eventually here we're going to jump back across the Hono'opi'ilani highway and pick up where we left off before we started heading up the hillside. We're now coming up on the area that held the Spinnaker condominium complex, and just past that you see the Maria Lanakila Catholic Church. We're coming up on the intersection of Waine'e Street and Dickinson Street, and just past that on the left-hand side is where the Aina Nalu condominium complexes were located prior to the fire. On the right-hand side of the screen you can see that we're coming up on a square rock wall that's actually a coral wall, and that's where the old Lahaina prison museum was. Okay, now that you've seen most of Lahaina town, I'm really curious to hear what all of you think about the progress being made in our rebuild. I think we can all agree that we'd like to see more progress in the commercial district with the rebuilding of businesses, especially along Front Street, but the priority from day one after the fire was always to rebuild people's homes first. And I think what we've accomplished in the first three years regarding the residential rebuild is pretty impressive. With that being said though, let me know in the comments what you think. We're now flying over the Shark Pit neighborhood and heading towards Pouamana, and just past Pouamana is where we're going to see that $350 million yacht that I mentioned at the beginning of the video. Some people might find that interesting, some people might not, but before we get there, let me just quickly remind you to go ahead and share this video with anyone you know who wants to know what's really happening here in Lahaina town, and subscribe to the channel for future videos just like this one. We're now getting to the point where you can see the Pouamana townhome community along the coastline at the top of the screen. Just offshore of Pouamana, you see a large boat in the water. That's actually a $350 million dollar super yacht that's owned by a Japanese billionaire who is a fashion entrepreneur and art collector. This German-built yacht is called the Nausicaa, and it measures 374 feet in length. Thanks for watching all the way to the end. I hope to see you all on the next video. Aloha.