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Rebuilding Lahaina: One Family’s Journey Home
From ash to avocado trees, one Lahaina family is growing their way back home.
October 9, 2025
For Pamela Reader, the house she and her husband bought in Lahaina’s Shark Pit neighborhood 15 years ago was more than walls and a roof — it was the only home their two daughters had ever known. On August 8, 2023, that home, and nearly every house around it, was reduced to ash when wildfires tore through the town.
“We left thinking it might just be smoke damage at first,” Reader said. “Within hours, my husband called and said, ‘I think everything’s gone.’”
In the days that followed, Lahaina’s resilient spirit came alive. “It was a huge community effort,” Reader said. “I’ve never been in a situation where I needed something so literally – clothing and food to feed my family. It was humbling, and pretty incredible to see the community step up.”
Even after losing everything, Pamela and her family were determined to help shape Lahaina’s future, eager to rebuild and heal. They became one of the first families in their neighborhood to secure permits, breaking ground anew in December 2024. Now, nearly two years later, they are weeks away from moving back and officially starting over.
Still, returning won’t mean coming home to the same Lahaina they left.
“It’s barren now. It used to be lush, tropical, full of shade and fruit trees. That’s what made it feel like Lahaina,” she said. “Adding trees back seems like such a simple thing, but it’s going to make a world of difference for us when we get back.”
That’s what made the community tree distribution on the second anniversary of the fires feel so significant. The event, hosted by the Arbor Day Foundation, in partnership with local organizations like The Outdoor Circle, TreeCovery, and the Royal Lahaina Resort, was about more than planting and distributing trees — it was about hope and renewal.
“It felt like moving forward,” Reader said.
Pamela’s family left with four trees: lemon, tangerine, and avocado, and a prized puakenikeni, a fragrant flower tree her daughters requested. “We’ll plant the avocado where the girls’ treehouse used to be,” she says. “It’s a way of putting life back where it was lost.”
In Lahaina, trees are more than landscaping. They are infrastructure for disaster recovery. They’ll restore shade in the island’s intense heat, provide fresh food to share with neighbors, and bring back the tropical character that once defined the community. The planting effort even includes mapping fruit trees so residents can barter harvests, a nod to island traditions of generosity.
“It’s about bringing back the little things that make you feel like you are home,” Reader said.
Read the full story of Lahaina’s journey to recovery at arborday.org/lahaina.
