Address
811 N. Catalina Ave. Suite 2006 Redondo Beach, CA 90250
Work Hours
Monday to Friday: 9 am - 5 pm and by appointment. We work remotely on Fridays.
VOADS are coalitions of agencies coming together. For our VOAD meeting, those present were: The Red Cross, Salvation Army, Hawaii Baptist Disaster Relief, the United Church of Christ, Americorp, and the Chair and Vice Chair of the Hawaii State VOAD. The update on Maui, a little over a year after the August 8, 2023 fires:
- 80% of the 12,000 who lost their homes on Maui in August 2023 were in apartments, and FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) does not give out housing grants to apartment dwellers. So thousands of people without insurance or FEMA money will need affordable home builds.
- Maui is not ready to host volunteer groups yet. There is no housing for volunteers and 95% of food is imported to Maui. Volunteers could be potentially a big drain on the local economy.
- 100% of property has been tested and gravel has been put over it. This was the job of the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers. Their timelines was 18 months and they did it in 12 months; a tremendous effort on the part of these agencies.
- Maui is ready to shift into long term recovery (LTRG). There is a Maui LTRG forming on Maui that is working on their non profit status. It will relate to the Hawaii VOAD as a member. There is good local leadership in Maui working on this.
- Even people with good home owner’s insurance are not getting compensated adequately to rebuild. The high cost of housing is going to be a big challenge. The Maui LTRG is going to need to raise massive amounts of money to help people afford to rebuild.
Army Corps of Engineers and EPA coordinate to assess and clean up hazardous waste and debris removal on each piece of property that experienced burn damage. It is a multi-step process and no construction is allowed to build until the process is done and the property is cleared. They put up signs like this on every property to show the progress.
