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Small businesses desperate for help a year after devastating fire

By Staff | Aug 8, 2024

WAILUKU – A year after the devastating Aug. 8, 2023, Lahaina wildfire destroyed a large portion of the west side of Maui in a matter of hours, local business owners are reflecting on their own experiences, and what can be done to help in the aftermath of tragedy.

Jeff Robertson, owner of Maui Sunriders Bike Company, said he remembers Aug. 8, 2023 like it was yesterday.

He had just opened the new flagship bike shop only 8 months prior, making it the company’s third on the island. Prior to the wildfire, he said it was a community gathering place, where local children would come after school, and others would come to watch sports on the TV, and check out the collectable bikes hanging on the wall.

But on the day of Aug. 8, 2023, all of that changed and he lost everything.

“Everything was gone, except for a couple bike frames and random parts and we couldn’t sift through anything and didn’t want to. Just even being there to see it was really tough,” he recalled.

Over the next few months, Robertson, like many small business owners impacted that day, found himself amidst challenge after challenge. From having to refund $80,000 to customers in the weeks after the fire, apply for SBA loans in a post-pandemic economy, and being denied any governmental assistance, he said he and others are still in desperate need of help.

“There was no money from the state, no money from the county and here we are seeing on a daily basis millions of dollars being raised…” he said.

Robertson said he was grateful to receive a $20,000 grant from the Maui Pono Foundation, but is hoping more can be done to assist small business owners.

“There needs to be more assistance or grants for the businesses that are here because if you don’t support those businesses then you don’t have a community,” he said.

Nathon Holder, owner of VigiLatte Artisan Coffee, formerly located on Front Street, said he echoes that statement.

After almost a year of trying to restart his business, he said the process has been anything but easy. From having to pay back state taxes with accrued interest and fines, to squaring away old invoices and employee expenses, any assistance he received went to what he owed.

“The state hasn’t been helpful at all in terms of making an arrangement to pay back those sales tax. They’ve actually put a lien on all my properties and are trying to confiscate all my properties,” Holder said.

He said while the company continues to persevere, he fears the impact will hurt not just local business owners, but the community as well.

“If you’re going to be smart about an investment in the economy and the future of your citizens, make sure the businesses do well so that we can keep hiring and keep paying our employees instead of going out of business. It’s unfortunate that our state leans more toward a corporatocracy as opposed to a small-business minded venture,” he said.

Chris Anderson, owner of Lahaina Printsellers which will be reopening at the end of the month at the Lahaina Cannery Mall, said while he’s excited to be carrying on the legacy of his late predecessor, as a new business owner, he’s had no help in restarting one of the island’s oldest galleries.

“It’s all my personal savings,” he said. “Since I’m technically a new owner, even though I was part of the company, it made the business unqualified for any FEMA support or any grants or assistance.”

Dustin Tester, owner of Maui Surfer Girls, Inc., said if it wasn’t for the help of a GoFundMe campaign, she would essentially be out of business and unable to help support her staff.

“The cost of living is so high and the housing crisis is so bad that four of my instructors had to leave the island…” she said. “It’s heartbreaking.”

She’s hoping the state and county can step in and do more to support the community.

“Hopefully the county will continue to support homeowners to have ohana units that are affordable,” she said.

David Yamashiro, owner of Ululani’s Hawaiian Shave Ice, said while he lost his Lahaina business, he tries not to complain as he is grateful that he did not lose a family member or someone close to him from the tragedy.

“What we lost we can always rebuild,” he said.

Yamashiro said the company is staying afloat and even expanding as a franchise to other areas in Hawai’i and on the mainland, but other business owners aren’t so lucky.

“The severity of what a lot of the business owners lost, a lot of them in Lahaina not only lost their homes, but their businesses. So any source of revenue they had, they lost,” he explained.

He said COVID-19 greatly impacted local businesses, and is now interfering with their ability to apply for grants and loans.

“The payback is still something they are confronted with having to do. So when they are applying for new loans or new grants or anything related to the fire, their credit is shot, they have no income coming in, so there’s really no bank or lending institution that would give them a loan. The only hope they have coming in on the governmental side would be if the criteria they had were lessened, but that has not been the case so far” he said.

“They really, really are in a bad place,” he added.

Multiple attempts were made to reach out to U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, Maui County Council Members Nohelani Uʻu-Hodgins, Keani Rawlins-Fernandez, and the Office of Economic Development Director Luana Mahi regarding governmental assistance for small businesses impacted by the Lahaina wildfire. No responses were made by deadline.

Councilmember Thomas Cook, who represents the South Maui district, issued the following statement.

“South Maui Small Business Owners impacted by the Maui Wildfires are encouraged to visit https://www.mauinuistrong.info/for/business and www.mauinuifirst.com for a comprehensive list of resources, grants, and programs pertaining to financial assistance and economic recovery,” he said.

Robertson said while Maui Sunriders Bike Company received around $6,000 in grant money through these resources, it’s still not enough.

“While these are great and offer a little bit of help, those amounts are a very small fraction of what is really needed,” he said.

The Maui wildfire took the lives of 102 people, destroyed more than 2,000 homes, and displaced an estimated 12,000 individuals.

According to the Hawai’i Dept. of Business, Economic, Development & Tourism, the disaster area had more than 800 business establishments with about 7,000 employees. The estimated loss from business closures and visitor expenditures is at $11 million a day on Maui since Aug. 9, 2023.