Red Cross CEO: Maui wildfire evacuees aren’t getting ‘kicked out’
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - There’s more confusion and uncertainty as Maui fire evacuees living in hotels and timeshares say they’re being told to move. But Gail McGovern, CEO and president of the American Red Cross, says fire evacuees aren’t getting “kicked out.”
People living in the Sands of Kahana timeshare told Hawaii News Now they were informed Wednesday to leave later in the day by security staff, but without confirmed new housing.
“I got a knock on the door today that I have to leave today,” said Charles Nahale, Lahaina wildfire evacuee who lived on Front Street.
“There is a second wave of humanitarian disaster in the making. We are being displaced for tourists.”
Kanani Lukela also lost her family home on Front Street in Lahaina and is living at Sands of Kahana. She thought she had to move Tuesday.
“There are no words. I just makes me more upset,” said Lukela.
McGovern blamed miscommunication. She insists no one is being forced to move without alternative housing and that people need to talk to their Red Cross representative.
“We are not asking anyone to leave until we find a permanent housing solution so people are staying in those hotels. We are not kicking people out,” said McGovern, at a news conference. “We have a lot of resources to put people in homes. We are the Red Cross. We don’t do things like that,” she added.
The Red Cross says it gave residents 48 hours notice to sign up with a Red Cross case manager and that communication could have been better about what the deadline actually meant.
There’s also confusion with Falls of Kahana, which is not under contract with the Red Cross.
Robert Fenton, FEMA Region 9 administrator, told the Maui County council that the hotels had capacity to house 8,000 people immediately after the Maui wildfires.
But that’s only temporary.
He says as a mid-term solution FEMA is looking at modular housing which is portable and has been used for homeless villages on Oahu.
“We realize that in some cases there’s not enough rental space that may force us to temporarily be building something that is modular, but if we were to do that, we want to make sure that we leverage that in a location that permanent housing can be built from that,” said Fenton.
FEMA has given rental assistance to more than 3,200 and even though thousands of letters have gone out offering renewal options, only 100 people have reapplied.
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