Beyond Recovery: Reflections on Resilience After the Lāhainā Wildfire

By Christy Shaver, Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi volunteer and Lāhainā wildfire survivor | Reading time: 3.5min

When I began researching long-term community recovery and resilience following the Lāhainā wildfire, I was not approaching the subject only as a researcher. I am a Lāhainā resident and wildfire survivor, and the questions that shaped my research continue to shape how I think about the future of a place and community I care deeply about.

Those questions were also part of what led me back to graduate school after more than 20 years. I wanted to better understand what long-term recovery requires and what resilience looks like over time.

Through my research, it became increasingly clear just how deeply connected these challenges are. Housing, water, food, energy, mental health, governance, culture, community cohesion, and our relationship with the ʻāina repeatedly intersect. It became difficult to talk about one without talking about the others.

Housing is one example. The ability of families to remain in Lāhainā is not simply a housing issue. It is connected to employment, culture, mental health, community relationships, and ultimately to whether a community can retain its people and identity through a prolonged recovery.

Water emerged as another powerful thread. Questions about water are also questions about ecosystems, agriculture, development, cultural practice, public trust, climate resilience, and who has a voice in determining how resources are managed.

Food and energy are part of this picture as well. Hawaiʻi's dependence on imported food and fuel becomes especially visible during a disaster. Strengthening local food systems and developing more resilient and community-responsive energy systems are not separate from disaster preparedness. They are part of building resilience before a disaster occurs.

Relationships and trust matter too. Recovery depends not only on plans and resources, but on people being able to work together, share knowledge, and trust one another. Those relationships are part of what allows a community to respond and adapt as conditions change.

I see many of these same connections through my work with the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi. Issues involving water, land, energy, and climate are also about people, communities, and the ʻāina. My research reinforced how difficult it is to separate environmental concerns from the social, economic, and cultural conditions that shape a community.

Resilience is not something we achieve once. Communities are always changing, as are the systems they depend on. What works today may need to change tomorrow. Being resilient means being able to adapt along the way.

That also means looking at the conditions that contribute to vulnerability long before a disaster occurs. High housing costs, dependence on imported resources, ecological degradation, inequitable access to land and water, aging infrastructure, and limited community influence over important decisions do not disappear simply because buildings are reconstructed.

If those underlying conditions remain unchanged, have we truly become more resilient?

And this is not only about Lāhainā.

Across Hawaiʻi, communities are confronting many of these same pressures. The circumstances differ from place to place, but these challenges do not exist in isolation.

Disaster recovery matters enormously. But resilience cannot begin on the day disaster strikes.

It is built over time through healthy watersheds and ecosystems, secure housing, strong local food systems, resilient energy systems, relationships and trust, responsible stewardship of water and ʻāina, and decision-making that gives people a meaningful voice in shaping the future of their communities.

I completed my research with more questions than I started with. Rather than feeling like an ending, those questions are now shaping where I hope to take this work next.

How do we move from responding to crises toward changing the conditions that make communities vulnerable in the first place? And how do we ensure that communities have meaningful power in determining their own futures?

For me, the question I am carrying forward is no longer simply how Lāhainā recovers. It is how we support communities across Hawaiʻi as they navigate change, strengthen resilience, and care for the well-being of people and the ʻāina.

No single organization, policy, or solution can accomplish that. It will require people working across issues, communities, and generations, grounded in an understanding that our own well-being is inseparable from the well-being of the ʻāina and one another.

Editor’s note: For more reflections from Christy Shaver, check out her substack at https://changeagent808.substack.com/; you can also review her Master’s Degree in Environmental Studies, Advocacy for Social Justice and Sustainability thesis, “A Systems Analysis of Long-Term Community Recovery Following the 2023 Lāhainā Wildfire: Understanding Recovery as a Complex Adaptive Social-Ecological System,” at https://aura.antioch.edu/etds/1296/.