Local Maui residents march in support of Lahaina's recovery from the 2023 wildfire. J. Matt/ZUMA Press Wire

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The one-story home 100 yards from Lāhainā Harbor where Tiare Lawrence grew up was a typical Hawaiʻi plantation home, a historic architectural style with a wide-hipped roof, a wooden light blue exterior, and a purple bougainvillea bush in the front yard.

It’s where her grandmother grew up, and her mother and aunties and uncles too. For more than a century, her family held onto the home, even as the number of Native Hawaiian families in Lāhainā dwindled, property taxes rose, and the town around them morphed into a tourism hub. In high school, Lawrence would wake up at dawn before school and carry her surfboard from the carport to her favorite surf spot, paddling as the sun’s rays softly lightened the West Maui sky.

Her voice breaks when she talks about it now: the banana patch her grand-uncle tended, the countless family gatherings, the family photos now lost forever after the house burned in a vicious wildfire last summer.

Thursday will mark one year since a wildfire ripped through Lāhainā, killing more than 100 people in the deadliest wildfire in modern United States history. The violent inferno devastated the coastal community, burning more than 2,000 buildings and displacing thousands of residents. This week, the community has scheduled many events to commemorate the disaster: surfers will paddle out en masse, families will gather at the Lāhainā Civic Center, and more than 100 Kānaka Maoli sixth graders will put on a stage production to honor the history of the town, once the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

The anniversary comes on the heels of a $4.037 billion tentative settlement announced........

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