Colorado businesses raising money for Maui wildfire victims

Coloradans – who are no strangers to wildfires – can donate money to victims of the ongoing wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui by frequenting several businesses statewide.

As of Friday, at least 111 people died in the wildfires that swept across Maui’s west side last week. What started as a brushfire strengthened with hurricane winds, leading to the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in more than a century, according to The Associated Press.

Maui County officials reported on Thursday night that the Olinda fire is 85% contained, the Kula fire is 80% contained, the Lāhainā fire is 90% contained and the Pūlehu/Kīhei fire is completely contained, but not extinguished.

Today, Native Hawaiians are asking tourists to refrain from visiting Maui as they try to locate their missing loved ones, recover bodies and house people experiencing homelessness – all with limited resources.

The wildfires “really wiped out the entire town of Lāhainā,” said Lisa Kelekolio, the current pelekikena (president) of the Piʻilani Hawaiian Civic Club of Colorado. “There was much loss of life. We haven’t even determined the full extent.”

To watch the natural disaster happen from afar as a Hawaiian, “it’s incredibly traumatic,” she said in a Friday interview. A native of Hilo on the Big Island, she’s always prepared that lava “might roll over your house, and you accept that.”

Through the civic club, Kelekolio’s already received several emails from Coloradans asking how they can help. Her organization will be accepting donations at two of its upcoming events: its charity golf tournament on Friday, Aug. 25, and its Hoʻolauleʻa – a Hawaiian festival – on Saturday, Sept. 2.

“Your donations matter, and they’re highly needed,” she said, as they’ll “hopefully help those people rebuild what they can and hopefully keep them on the ʻāina (land).”

For Hawaiians, that’s the end goal: to prevent more natives from leaving.

“That’s their land. That’s ancestral land,” Kelekolio said. “That’s the only place that we have as a people.”