On his way to Lahaina on Wednesday to tour the fire destruction, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg traveled along the six-mile coastal stretch of Honoapiilani Highway that will be moved inland in a $160 million project that still needs more funding.

With Hawaii competing for $50 billion in discretionary funding and other grants from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, local and state officials say it helps for Buttigieg to see in person the benefit of the project, one of some 40,000 underway or in consideration across the country.

If not for the Aug. 8 wildfire in Lahaina, the country’s deadliest in more than a century, it’s unlikely Buttigieg would have come to Maui.

That’s also the case for some of the other most senior federal officials — five Cabinet members, the speaker of the House, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the assistant secretary of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — who all have made the long trip to the middle of the Pacific to see the devastation for themselves, hear the harrowing stories of survivors and pledge federal support.

Most notable was President Joe Biden, the first sitting president to make an official visit to Maui. In August, he told a large crowd of survivors at the Lahaina Civic Center: “The entire country is here for you.”

The administration “has sent out their leadership and their expertise and their money,” U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz said in an interview Saturday. “And the Cabinet, at the direction of President Biden, has been asked to fly to Maui, to be in regular contact on the phone, and to try to be maximally helpful.”

The tragedy put a spotlight on Maui and its needs, including housing, adaption to climate change and access to water, that have been problems long before Aug. 8.

“We have a lot more attention on us, so there’s a lot more focus and probably resources,” Maui Mayor Richard Bissen said. “This is the time to make sure we have our voices heard.”

Most of the dignitaries came in the first couple months after the fire killed at least 101 people and destroyed more than 2,000 structures. But they continue to come.

Schatz, along with the other members of Hawaii’s Congressional delegation, has advocated for these visits.

“We’re geographically isolated, but that doesn’t mean we should be politically isolated,” Schatz said. “And so my objective is to make sure that nobody forgets about the people of Hawaii and the people of Maui as the nation rolls on more than six months after the wildfires.”

On Wednesday, Buttigieg and U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Katherine Tai were the latest of Biden’s Cabinet members to make the long trip, following Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra in August, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in September and Small Business Administration’s Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman earlier this month.

Bissen — a retired judge who had only been mayor for seven months when the fires stuck — once again got one-on-one time and was flanked at a press conference by a large group of high-ranking federal and state officials vowing to support Maui now and for the long haul.

It is the Biden administration’s “whole of government approach we are representing,” said Michael Connor, assistant secretary of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps is just one federal agency contributing major resources, including leading the debris cleanup and building a temporary school. Maui County’s 81-page “Wildfires Initial Recovery Needs Assessment” outlines the wide variety of help that will be required during the long recovery process.

Connor had overseen the Corps’ response from afar until Wednesday.

“First, we’re obviously sobered and humbled by what we’ve seen today,” he said. “But it’s our responsibility as leaders to come and witness the devastation to better understand the challenges that we have in the immediacy of rebuilding and restoring. And then to also think about the risks not only faced by Lahaina and Maui but other communities from similar situated circumstances because our ultimate goal is to build resilience.”

Kathy Ferguson, a political science professor at the University of Hawaii Manoa, said while these types of trips from high-ranking federal officials have short-term value, she’s skeptical that they go much further than immediate needs.

“We have a historical struggle here going on between different ways to understand water and the use of water,” she said. “I just don’t think big questions get asked. I think it may be a little bit of help at the moment, the instant it happens, but they’re going to leave and Maui’s still going to have a water fight.”

But Hawaii officials hope at least Buttigieg now will have a better understanding of the infrastructure needs of the island and state.

Last week, he listened intently while engineers with the Federal Highway Administration explained that almost every time there are king tides or major wave action, ocean water crashes over the emergency-built seawall and onto Honoapiilani Highway, cutting off West Maui from the rest of the island.

“We were hoping you would see it today,” joked Ed Sniffen, director of the Hawaii Department of Transportation that is leading the project.

Buttigieg also was briefed in Lahaina about Maui’s other road projects that have received millions of federal funding from the federal infrastructure law. His trip was part of the Biden administration’s fourth Investing in America Tour to tout these projects before the upcoming election.

“I came here because transportation to Maui is unique and vital to life here, so I thought it was important to see it firsthand,” Buttigieg said. “And because I wanted to make sure I could offer an update on what the federal government was doing to be a good partner in building that future transportation.”

Buttigieg likely will remember his trip to Maui. He noted that he was watching breaching whales and chickens running around Launiopoko Beach Park in Lahaina as he was making his remarks. He also smiled broadly when he was presented with a hand-made lei by a state transportation engineer.

He also got to see up close the importance of the Honoapiilani Highway when he talked about the realignment project, which already has received $51 million in federal funding that Schatz helped secure.

“It’s more than an inconvenience,” Buttigieg said. “It keeps people from getting to work, stops people from reaching the hospital quickly, keeps vital goods from being moved across the island and it blocks off the road for emergency responders or evacuators.”

And after seeing how the Maui roads were part of the disaster, he said: “I certainly would expect that there will be even more attention to the importance of evacuation and perhaps new visions for the way the streetscape is working with this community.”

That connection is what Schatz said is important about personal visits: “I’m a reasonably effective explainer, but it still takes me a couple of paragraphs to describe the ways in which Hawaii is different. But once somebody has seen it, they get it, as long as they’re paying attention.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.