‘I know that we’re lucky’: How one Maui teacher is healing one year after Lahaina fire

Mindi Cherry is still processing the fire that destroyed her family’s home and the school she taught at for 14 years.

“It all feels like a dream or a nightmare that you're going to wake up from,” Cherry says. “We've had a lot of fires on Maui recently and just the smell. It triggers all of the visions of that night…like we escaped with embers and ash flying all around us. So I feel like it's never going to be normal again. But we're powering through everything. That's all we can really do.”

The first-grade teacher is rebuilding both her life and the lives of her students one year after a fast-moving wildfire on Maui killed 102 people and left thousands of people without homes.

Before the disaster, she taught almost two dozen students at King Kamehameha III Elementary School in Lahaina. But since many families had to move away, she now teaches only 10.

School is closed Thursday to observe one year since the fire. But over the months, she says it has been a safe place for children.

“It gave them somewhere to go other than their hotel room because a lot of them were in hotels with their entire family,” she says. “You could see their smiles and they loved seeing all of their friends. They had some trauma that they were dealing with as well.”

The students are now in a temporary modular classroom for at least the next five years. Cherry says they’ve decorated the metal walls with magnets to bring warmth to a cold space.

“We're not allowed to permanently put anything on the walls because the buildings are leased,” she says. “I feel like they did the best they could with the time they had, but it doesn't look or feel like an elementary school.”

As the new school year gets underway, Cherry says she is focused on helping her students work through their trauma.

“I think the most important thing to do at the beginning is to build relationships with them and to hear their stories,” she says. “And I have a unique perspective in that I lost my house as well, that has helped to build the relationships with the students.”

Cherry was at home the day of the fire because school was closed. She watched the conditions worsen before she and her family decided to evacuate.

“We were just all shocked. Like we didn't think the fire was that close and we just kind of packed a bag,” she says. “We did not do a great job of grabbing things, which will haunt us until the day we die, I think.”

Cherry left everything behind: important financial documents, $22,000 in cash, even her wedding ring.

She got the ring back, she says, after volunteers with Samaritan’s Purse were able to dig it out of the debris.

Everything else was destroyed.

“My two older children, their father died of brain cancer when they were really young. He loved the Pittsburgh Steelers, so I saved tons of memorabilia for them. They'd [gone] through it and decided who was going to get what,” she says. “I didn't grab any of that. You know, you can't replace that.”

Cherry recalls watching gas stations explode and the moment that her husband convinced her to leave.

“I was like, ‘No, it's fine. We're going to sleep on the beach tonight. We'll be back tomorrow,’ Cherry says. ”He said, ‘No, that's our house. It's on fire. We need to leave.’”

Cherry’s family of five and their three dogs went to the local Coast Guard station because her husband was on active duty. She says a family put them up for the night and they bounced around for a bit before living in a hotel for six weeks. Now, they’re in their own home in Wailuku on Maui.

“Our insurance was amazing… They didn't make us itemize everything we lost. They just gave us the max that they could. And so we were able to find housing,” she says. “But, it's still not home. I mean, other people are just now getting into a temporary house that they're going to be in for a year and then they don't know what's going to happen to them. So, I know that we're lucky.”

Cherry says it was challenging to buy a house on Maui, where a housing affordability crisis worsened after the fire.

A developer from the mainland put in an offer on the same three-bedroom home because he wanted to turn it into a rental. Her family ended up getting it, but only after agreeing to pay more than $1 million. She says the seller was also a teacher who had a soft spot for Cherry.

“Thankfully, they wanted us to get the house and not a developer who wanted to have a rental income,” she says. “They worked with us a little bit there.”

Cherry wants people on the mainland to better understand that she and her community are still healing.

“Right now, our lot is just gravel when it used to be our home. And just because you'll hear on the news that everybody's out of hotels and in housing, it's temporary housing for most people. And there's still a huge problem that needs to be fixed and we still need to bring Lahaina back,” she says. “It's going to take a long time.”

Cherry says there are good days and bad days, but the children in her life keep her going.

“I think for me, when you see the students or I see my daughter or my two older kids, I think that's what does it,” she says. “Nobody deserves to have this happen to them. And everybody needs a safe place, safe person.”