Hawaii’s fire rebuild will be complete in 2038 at current pace

by Zachary Faria, Washington Examiner, June 24, 2025

Fires devastated Hawaii in August 2023 thanks to the incompetence of the Democratic politicians who run the state. That same incompetence has the rebuilding effort moving at a glacial pace 22 months later.

According to the dashboard run by Maui County, 26 homes have been rebuilt in the 22 months since the fires. A total of 429 building permits have been issued but not completed, meaning the Aloha State is averaging just under 21 approved permits per month when counting the already completed homes. Another 329 permits are still being processed, meaning that, at the current pace, the last of them would be approved by October 2026.

National Public Radio reported in August 2024, a full year after the fires, that “There are still piles of burned rubble on Lahaina’s waterfront, remnants of the historic buildings with shops and restaurants where tourists once strolled.” It wasn’t until February 2025 that debris removal had been completed, 18 months after the fires. This was celebrated as being completed ahead of schedule, although not all the debris has been taken to landfills as of two weeks ago. By January 2025, a total of three homes had been rebuilt. The remaining 23 have been finished over the past five months, an average of fewer than five per month. At the pace of five completed projects per month, the rebuilding would be finished by around January 2038.

According to that same NPR report, many homes and businesses now find themselves in climate “no-build” zones, thanks to Hawaii’s obsession with climate change. That means that they will need to apply for exceptions after Maui officials have “one-on-one” conversations with those oceanfront landowners before they are allowed to build back their homes or businesses as they were in the locations they were. Even if they are granted permission to rebuild locations where they are, state restrictions on “non-conforming” structures mean many will not be able to rebuild how they were built in the first place.

This level of incompetence is the same that put Hawaii in this position in the first place. Hawaiian Electric spent its time and resources meeting renewable energy mandates from the Democratic state government, despite the risk of wildfires from its power lines being clear since 2019. Gov. Josh Green (D-HI) walked back an executive order cutting red tape to speed up the process because he was accused of “dictatorship” and “genocide” by left-wing activist groups. Hawaii Democrats created the conditions for these catastrophic fires and have now slow-walked the rebuilding process thanks to their burdensome regulations and general nonchalance toward functional governance.

Just as with the Los Angeles fires, both the severity of the fires and the glacial pace of the rebuilding efforts can be chalked up to the governance of Democratic politicians. Hawaii Democrats have become complacent due to their unchallenged dominance of the state, and that complacency is reflected in every aspect of the wildfires and recovery efforts.

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