For a few days after the Lāhainā wildfires, Berkmen had to stay inside because she had childhood bronchitis and the smoke would irritate her lungs.
“I felt really powerless because I was just inside and I was just watching it from my house,” she said.
The death toll from the fires was 100. More than 2,000 structures were damaged. The estimated cost to rebuild is $5.5 billion.
Berkmen said she remembers wildfires occurring when she was younger, but nothing to this extent. When the once-booming sugarcane and pineapple industries slowed in the 1940s, a lot of the area became filled with flammable, invasive grasses that colonizers had originally brought to Hawaii.
“There were times when I couldn’t get home from practice where the highway would shut down because there’s a fire and I would get stuck in Kihei,” she said. “I’m lucky that I live close to hotels, so generally the greenery is more maintained around where I live. Otherwise it would put tourists at risk. So I’ve never had the fire come close enough to home where I felt where we were advised to evacuate, but I have felt the need to evacuate especially in this last fire.”
“There’s something just like impending about the whole situation,” Berkmen said. “It just felt like you’re constantly waiting for something worse to happen.”
Once the area around her house was clear, Berkmen started volunteering in the recovery efforts with her family. She helped with item distribution but saw her family tend to severe cases. Her mom was treating a patient who had burns across his body, and there was another patient who couldn’t be treated because all his identification documents had burned in the fires.
“From the perspective of people on the ground, it didn’t feel like we were getting any help,” Berkmen said. “So it was nice to know that at least there were enough people to help in some way.”
