18 August 2023
BRAINERD Every phone call Hannah Erickson gets is terrifying.
She doesn’t know if the voice on the other end is going to give her some news she’s been hoping for, or if her heart is about to break even more.
“I have just heard horror story after horror story,” Erickson said during an interview Wednesday, Aug. 16. “I just feel like all day long, I’m getting phone calls about people that didn’t make it.”
Erickson has called Maui, Hawaii, home for the past five years. Now she’s living at her grandparents’ cabin in Crosslake, watching from afar the aftermath of horrendous wildfires that destroyed her home of Lahaina and devastated so many of her loved ones.
She knows her house and all the belongings inside are reduced to a pile of ash. She knows the streets of her neighborhood are lined with charred remnants of not just buildings but people.
She doesn’t know where all her friends are. But she does know some are gone, and the rest are struggling.
“It’s very hard for me to be here and just to know that they’re all still displaced and have nowhere to go,” she said.
A Crosslake native and 2014 Pequot Lakes High School graduate, Erickson flew out to Minnesota Monday, Aug. 7, to help out at her sister and brother-in-law’s hockey camp in Brainerd.
The trip was only supposed to last five days, so she packed just a couple outfits, knowing she’d be wearing her hockey camp T-shirt most of the time.
Her house burned down the next day, and now she doesn’t know when she’ll be able to go back.
“I believe in the rebuild, and I want them to rebuild, and it’s such a special place, but I don’t know, from a business standpoint, what that could even look like,” she said, noting so many of the businesses revolve around tourism.
“The future, it just seems very dark for a lot of people,” she said. “I think a lot of people just don’t know what to do next or where to even go.”
Erickson’s neighborhood of Wahikuli was one of the last areas in Lahaina to burn. At least 80% of the city succumbed to flames last week. The official death toll was at 111 Wednesday, Aug. 16, but it’s likely much higher.
Wildfires are nothing new in Maui, but a fire this disastrous, paired with hurricane-force winds, is unprecedented on the little island.
“Where my house is doesn’t typically get affected by fires,” Erickson said.
But this time it did.
She hasn’t seen the damage in person, but the photos and accounts from friends and neighbors are enough for Erickson to know she’s lucky to have been away at the time.
A couple friends offered to visit her house three days later to inspect the damage. The first, however, had to give up after just a block, horrified by the number of charred bodies lying in the streets.
Erickson told her to turn around and go home.
“It just really frustrates me that three days later my neighbors’ bodies were still on the street,” she said through tears. “I don’t think people should have to see that.”
She knows the cleanup efforts aren’t easy, but a big part of the problem in Lahaina stems from the lack of notification and preparedness ahead of time.
“I know it’s a natural disaster, but I feel like you can plan for these things, and being in a place like Hawaii where we have hurricanes, and we have tsunamis, and we have these types of tropical storms and natural disasters I just feel like there should have been a better plan, and I feel like there should have been more help,” she said.
Erickson feels like officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and personnel from the military bases in Oahu could have been there sooner after it happened, and county officials could have sounded the alarm beforehand, preventing some of the tragedy.
State officials confirmed warning sirens stayed silent, never alerting residents to the danger, even though Maui County has 80 outdoor sirens. No evacuation orders were put in place, many people not knowing the danger until they already saw smoke.
“So many of my friends were like, ‘I saw the smoke, I went inside to grab a few things, I came outside, and my neighbor’s house was on fire,’” Erickson said. “It was just so fast.”
There’s talk of a text alert that went out, but so many were without power or cell service in the days leading up to the fires.
Hurricane Dora since weakened to Typhoon Dora amplified the devastation and complicated communication. The storm was about 490 miles south of the islands during Tuesday’s fire, bringing up to 60 mph gusts of wind to Lahaina, according to local news outlets, fanning the flames to the already raging fires.
“I’m confident that it is much worse than what’s being reported on the news,” Erickson said, worrying the story is going to lose focus and fade away if the actual death toll and the magnitude of the destruction don’t come to light.
“Everyone knows it’s horrible, but I don’t think people know how horrible it is and how devastating it was for the people there,” she said.
Erickson’s boyfriend has a 10-year-old son, whose best friend and his family were found burned alive in their car.
“Those were people we were good friends with, and it’s also a 10-year-old’s best friend. I don’t even know how you begin to tell him that,” she said as more tears came to her eyes.
Losing a house to a fire is one thing.
“But when you lose an entire town,” Erickson said, “it just takes away your entire life everyone’s jobs, everyone’s livelihoods. It’s everything you know for everyone that lives there. It’s not just displacement.”
Erickson might have lost her house, her possessions and a large part of her business, but others who have never known a home away from Maui lost their entire lives.
To make horrid matters even worse, Lahaina residents have already received calls from real estate agents, offering to buy their land.
“First of all, that’s heartless,” Erickson said. “Second of all, it’s just such a tough place to be in when you don’t have anything. You’re grieving, and then you’re offered this money.”
She worries native Lahaina residents will be priced out of their homes, never able to afford to return to the area they love.
Being so far away from the problems her friends continue to face, Erickson is now working through survivor’s guilt, both grateful she didn’t have to physically go through what others have but saddened she can’t help on the ground.
“I would go back there today if I could, just to help my friends,” she said. “I just want to see them all and give them big hugs. I want to talk to people and make sure everyone’s accounted for.”
But Erickson would feel guilty taking away resources from those who need them, especially when she’s safe in Minnesota and knows she might not have the skillset needed to really help.
So she’s doing what she can from Minnesota.
“My friends are walking 3 miles up this mountain to get one bar (of cell service), and they’ll call me, and I have a whole list of notes in my phone that I’m taking down for them to give them information.”
She finds out where there’s gas, shelter and clean drinking water, and where dangerous power lines still lie in the streets.
Erickson gleans what she can from the news and compiles her list of all the information her friends need while their power, internet and cell service is down.
“I feel fortunate that I’m in a position where I can take all this information and gather it for my friends,” she said.
Not only is she gathering information, but she’s gathering friends as well, preparing for four of them to come stay with her in Minnesota until they can get back on their feet.
“That’s one way, I guess, I’ve found I can be helpful, is just offering them a place to live,” Erickson said. “Even though it’s Minnesota, it’s not Maui.”
Weather aside, though, there might be more similarities between the two places than people realize. Lahaina has a population of about 12,000, making it slightly smaller than Brainerd.
“It’s weird to say that Maui and Minnesota are similar, but it’s the same small town feel,” she said. “… You know everyone there.”
And instead of Minnesota Nice, there’s the Aloha Spirit.
“‘Aloha’ means sharing the breath of peace with those around you, so it’s quite literally like breathing peace onto people and sharing peace,” Erickson said. “I just feel like sometimes you go to a place, and it feels like home.” That’s how Maui and Lahaina have felt for her over the past five years.
Erickson worked hard to build up her company, Simulated Media, so she could move somewhere like Maui and continue working. She contracts with businesses, providing them with marketing services, social media management and website design.
Locally, she works with Baratto Brothers Construction in Crosslake, Northerner Hockey Camp in Brainerd and Vision Electric in Baxter. She’s grateful for the Minnesota clientele after losing tourism-based clients in Maui, like restaurants and surf shops. Erickson is also a photographer, though she lost all her equipment in the fire.
“I don’t know what the future looks like for me either,” she said. “I’m going to stay here to recoup until I can figure it out.”
And she’ll be gathering supplies especially things like diapers, baby formula, clothing and other essentials both for her friends coming here and those still stuck in Maui.
Anyone who wants to help toward the effort can reach out to Erickson at [email protected] or find her GoFundMe at bit.ly/3sn5xaB.
“Just say a little prayer for Lahaina,” she said. “They’re struggling.”
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