What Maui Can Learn from Kaua‘i’s Recovery After Hurricane Iniki

Thirty-two years after Hurricane Iniki made landfall on Kaua’i in 1992, few physical reminders remain of the storm’s destruction, but there are many reminders of the island’s resilience.

They include 20 homes in the 189-unit Hokulei Estates subdivision in Puhi, over 160 homes built around the island by homeowners in partnership with Kaua‘i Habitat for Humanity, and the Kalepa Village low-income rental project in Hana – mā‘ulu. These residences were part of about 565 new affordable homes built in the decade after Iniki using disaster relief funds.

“In a way, a disaster can have very positive benefits for the community if it’s designed and worked out right,” says Chad Taniguchi about Kaua‘i’s recovery. He served as Kaua‘i’s housing administrator from 1990 to 1995.

He and others familiar with Kaua‘i’s recovery say some of the Garden Isle’s lessons may provide insights for Maui, though they acknowledge the disasters had starkly different impacts. In August 2023, wildfires on Maui destroyed over 2,200 structures, caused $5.5 billion in damage and claimed 101 lives, making it one of the deadliest U.S. wildfires in the last century. Hurricane Iniki, in contrast, severely damaged or destroyed over 4,000 Kaua‘i homes, caused over $6 billion in damage in today’s dollars, injured about 100 people and killed seven.

Maui is already implementing some of Kaua‘i’s lessons by building temporary housing projects that can later be used for permanent housing and by establishing an office to expedite rebuilding permits. That office issued its first permit to rebuild in Lahaina in mid-May.

“If you have the concept that you want this disaster to be of benefit for the long term for the people who are already there and who are being displaced, use that as overall value or principle, I think you can find ways to make that come true,” Taniguchi says.

Different Disasters and Impacts

Iniki, a category 4 hurricane, was the strongest recorded hurricane to hit Hawai‘i. JoAnn Yukimura, who served as Kaua‘i’s mayor from 1988 to 1994, recalls sleeping on her office floor the night before Iniki made landfall on Sept. 11, 1992. She and her team watched from her office as Iniki came ashore during the afternoon.

Winds up to 160 mph flattened wooden structures, tore off roofs and knocked out about half of the island’s power lines, leaving many communities without electricity for weeks. Thousands of residents were displaced and found shelter with family or friends, at hotels or on the beach.

Most hotels were so damaged they closed; those still operating housed relief workers and displaced residents. But the island’s tourism industry, which comprised between 65% and 70% of Kaua‘i’s economy, came to a standstill.

Yukimura recalls viewing the island from a helicopter the day after Iniki. While flying over Kekaha on the island’s west side, she saw residents checking on neighbors, fixing their roofs and waving to her. “There was already such a community spirit,” she says.

Within a month, the Kaua‘i County Council and Yukimura approved the creation of an Office of Emergency Permitting to process rebuilding permits and waive permit fees. The Federal Emergency Management Agency funded the OEP.

Several repairs and replacements were exempted from permit requirements. Among them were repairing or replacing non-retaining walls and fences, and non-bearing walls, ceilings, floors and windows.

Kaua‘i also required that structures be rebuilt with hurricane connectors and other requirements to better withstand future hurricanes. Yukimura says among the lessons learned from Hurricane Iwa, which struck the island in 1982, was adopting stronger hurricane requirements and requiring permits for major repairs and rebuilds of existing structures. If Kaua‘i had done both after Iwa, it may not have sustained as much damage from Iniki, she says.

“Hurricane Iniki created the urgency to get things done,” she says. “And as long as you could guide it to get it done right – because there’s often the temptation to just do it fast and not do it right – if you can do it right, then it is a long-term foundation.”

Kaua’i habitat for Humanity received Iniki relief funds in 1997 to build 95 for-sale homes in its ‘Ele’ele iluna subdivision. | Photo: courtesy of David Bieker

Separate Permitting Office

Kaua‘i’s Iniki recovery generated a construction boom. The OEP issued nearly 14,300 permits between October 1992 and the end of May 1995. The office was run by Keith Companies, a private engineering and surveying firm.

Reconstruction or repairs of hurricane-impacted structures had to comply with health and building requirements that were in place in 1992.

An owner would have to go through the normal permitting process if he or she wanted to rebuild a hurricane-damaged structure substantially larger, change the structure’s use or density, or rebuild in a high hazard area. The OEP also did not process Special Management Area permits or zoning changes, says Peter Vincent, an O‘ahu architect who helped establish and run the office.

In addition to processing permit applications, the office conducted outreach to help residents understand the new requirements. Staff held seminars, participated in radio programs, distributed flyers and went house to house to hang door hangers. Vincent says the OEP even wrote letters to insurance companies to explain what homeowners needed to do to rebuild.

He adds that the office was meant to be a one-stop. At its peak, it employed 64 plans examiners, inspectors, clerks and administrative staff, but the office also for a time housed representatives from the state Department of Health. That helped expedite decision-making.

The one-stop shop “short circuited a lot of the issues or finger pointing or ‘go see somebody else’ kind of thing. And that was really needed. I think something like that on Maui would be super helpful because permitting is such a hard process,” Vincent says.

He adds: “For people once they finally are able to rebuild, they don’t have to wait two years to get a building permit. It’s just ridiculous. I mean, they’ve been through enough hardship.”

While Kaua‘i’s rebuilding started quickly, Maui’s has taken longer due to the hazardous materials that must be cleared after the fires.

“Many of the Kaua‘i properties were damaged but not burned to the ground,” says Carl Bonham, executive director of UH’s Economic Research Organization. “And there’s a difference between replacing all your windows and roofs and repairing something versus starting from scratch.”

In an email, Maui County’s Communications office wrote that the county learned lessons from all its state and county partners, including Kaua‘i, which was among the first to send its people and other resources to Maui to help with emergency response after the August 2023 fires. The County also received assistance from California’s Sonoma County.

Maui County opened its Recovery Permitting Center at the end of April. The center is run by 4Leaf Inc., a California-based professional services firm that specializes in fire recovery and also helped Sonoma County with its permitting needs after wildfires.

“It’ll be very important for folks who are trying to rebuild once the debris is all removed,” Bonham says. “I think we’ll see that permitting activity in the latter half of this year start to ramp up for folks literally going in and rebuilding their destroyed properties, particularly in Lahaina.”

As of June 21, the Recovery Permit Center had processed about 80 permit applications and issued 15 permits. Applicants can request that their permit fees be deferred if they are rebuilding residential structures. And permit fees may be assessed at half of what they would normally be if residential and commercial structures were built not long before the August wildfires. In an email, Maui County’s Communications team wrote that the county has not deferred permit fees for any single-family houses that are being rebuilt in fire-affected areas.

The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii argues that permit fees should be waived instead. Malia Blom Hill, policy director of the nonprofit public policy research organization, says those fees can block residents from rebuilding.

Permit fees are set in Maui’s annual budget ordinance and vary based on the valuation of the construction work. For example, projects valued from $100,001 to $500,000 are charged $880 for the first $100,000, plus $5 for each additional $1,000. Electrical, plumbing, driveway, grading and other permits have additional charges.

Gov. Josh Green joins the April 30 groundbreaking of Ka La’i Ola, which will create 450 housing units for Maui wildfire survivors who aren’t eligible for FEMA assistance. | Photo: courtesy of Ka La‘i

Limited Time Frame

It’s hard to miss the Coco Palms hotel along Kaua‘i’s Kūhiō Highway. Until recently, the Wailua hotel, located on culturally and historically significant land, has sat largely derelict since it was battered by Iniki.

Now, construction activity abounds under the latest rebuilding effort. Developers are rebuilding under a so-called “Iniki ordinance” that allows non-conforming structures to be rebuilt to their pre-hurricane conditions. Coco Palms’ previous owners received permits to rebuild prior to the now-repealed ordinance’s 2015 expiration.

Gary Hooser, a former Kaua‘i councilmember and state senator, says the hotel should not be allowed to be rebuilt under decades-old standards. He voted in 2013 against the county bill that extended the ordinance’s expiration to 2015. He says that the ordinance had a valid purpose after the storm – to allow people to rebuild – but “it should be limited to that purpose and not held out forever.”

Maui County is now considering a proposal that would allow nonconforming structures impacted by natural disasters, such as the August wildfires, to be repaired or rebuilt in a similar fashion while complying with existing building and fire safety requirements. Building owners would need to have their final inspections done within four years of the governor’s original state of disaster.

Jonathan Helton, policy researcher for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, says he questions whether four years is long enough, especially for Lahaina structures located in the special management area and historic districts. Structures in those areas require additional approvals.

One option, he says, is for Maui to provide flexibility to building owners by including language in the proposal to allow the mayor to extend its time frame.

Maui’s nonconforming structure proposal passed its Planning Commission in late February, with an amendment to allow the structures five years to rebuild, with an option for a two-year extension; at press time, the Maui County Council had yet to introduce the bill.

Build Lots of Homes

Taniguchi recalls a meeting he had with a representative from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development after Hurricane Iniki. The Kaua‘i Housing Agency had just built 35 simple cottages around the island on lots where homes were destroyed. The first cottages were mostly built by volunteers, but the project was considered a failure for costing twice its budget after volunteer labor couldn’t be sustained.

However, HUD was blown away by the county government’s efforts to meet its residents’ needs, Taniguchi says. In 1994, the department gave the Kaua‘i Housing Agency $41 million in disaster funds. Prior to Iniki, the agency received about $700,000 to $1.2 million in federal monies each year.

According to a September 1993 article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the island then needed about 6,000 new homes to meet housing demand. Monthly rents for a two-bedroom apartment averaged $1,100 compared with about $900 pre-Iniki; for a three-bedroom, rents averaged about $1,400 compared with $1,000 prior.

Insurance covered most of the rebuilding for existing homes and commercial buildings, so the $41 million was largely used to build 563 affordable homes under the agency’s Pāku‘i Housing Program over 10 years.

The agency held a series of community meetings to get feedback on the affordable housing projects that developers proposed. Ken Rainforth, who worked for the Kaua‘i Housing Agency in various roles between 1979 and 2009, says that helped projects get approved without opposition. Projects were given grants and no-interest loans; the paybacks went into a revolving fund to fund other affordable housing projects.

Disaster funds also helped the county to rebuild 10 homes damaged by Iniki, establish a homebuyer loan program that funded eight homes, construct two water wells in Kekahā and Hanamā‘ulu, and hardened existing infrastructure in other areas.

“If you look at it from afar, you don’t want anything to be left after you spend all this money for short term efforts,” Taniguchi says, adding that he doesn’t know the specifics of Maui’s recovery. “If you can minimize the amount of money going out for the short term and invest in things that will be a benefit to the people and the island for the long term, then that’s the best way. That’s how you use a disaster for positive things.”

Several interim housing projects are underway to house displaced Maui residents and will have longer-term benefits after those initial uses.

One is the 450-unit Ka La‘i Ola being built in Lahaina. The project will house survivors ineligible for federal aid for up to five years, after which the state will commit the land and permanent infrastructure to the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. And the 175-unit Hale ‘O Lā‘ie, the former Maui Sun Hotel in Kīhei, will transition to teacher and workforce rentals with public kindergarten space after it is initially used to house survivors.

An artist’s rendering of the Ka La’i Ola temporary housing project for wildfire survivors in Lahaina. | Rendering: Courtesy Ka La’i

Challenging Recovery

It took Kaua‘i’s economy eight years to recover after Iniki, according to a 2009 working paper by the UH Economic Research Organization. Unemployment rose to 19.1% immediately after the hurricane, compared with 6.8% just before. The island lost about 3,000 private sector jobs – about 12% of the island’s employment – amounting to $225 million in 2008 dollars in annual lost income.

Kaua‘i’s unemployment rate did not return to pre-Iniki levels until 1999, and the number of private jobs available didn’t return until 2002. While visitor arrivals to the island stabilized in 1995, they didn’t reach pre-Iniki levels until 2008.

Bonham, the UHERO executive director, says Maui has a challenging recovery period ahead. Maui was already suffering from a severe housing shortage, and in the immediate days after the fires, nearly 8,000 Lahaina residents were sheltered in 40 hotels. His organization estimates that 3,500 people have left the island and that the labor force is down about 5,000 people.

The Maui wildfires led to the loss of 7,000 jobs in September 2023 compared with pre-wildfires, so there has been some recovery, he says. Many employers in industries heavily impacted by the pandemic struggled to find workers even before the fires. But he expects the jobs recovery will slow moving forward, especially for the food service and retail sectors.

About 60,000 visitors spent about $250 to $300 each day on Maui before the fires. Bonham says that number is down by 15,000 people as of the first quarter of this year. The daily visitor count isn’t expected to return to 60,000 people until the end of 2025.

“It’s going to get harder for that recovery going forward to the extent that we don’t add housing quickly,” he says. “As long as we add 2,000 to 3,000 housing units and free up some of the visitor plant over the next year, then I think our visitor forecast has a chance of coming true and will continue to see some growth, but we will still see average daily census on Maui that’s well below pre-wildfire.”