After the Fire

By: J. David Chapman, PhD, / October 16, 2026

I am writing this week’s column from the Maui airport, waiting for a flight home to Oklahoma. On the drive to the airport, I passed something most tourists probably do not put in their vacation photos: an entire neighborhood built to house families displaced by the devastating Maui wildfires of August 2023.

Three years later, they are still living there. Fire moves fast. Recovery moves at the speed of housing. On August 8, 2023, wildfires swept across Maui, most devastatingly through historic Lahaina. One hundred and one people died, thousands of structures were damaged or destroyed, and billions of dollars of property disappeared.

But disasters do not end when the fire goes out. What caught my attention on the drive to the airport was Kilohana, FEMA’s temporary housing community near Lahaina. Calling it “temporary housing” almost understates what was required.

FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers developed 34 acres of rocky land, blasting rock and installing streets, water, sewer, electricity and other infrastructure. Then 167 one-, two- and three-bedroom modular homes were manufactured on the mainland, shipped across the Pacific and placed on the site.

These aren't trailers expected to disappear in a few months. The homes were built to local building standards and designed to last 30 years or more. Today, all 167 units continue to house wildfire survivors.

Think about that for a moment. The fire changed Lahaina in hours. Three years later, families are still living in housing created specifically because their homes disappeared that day.

There is an important real estate lesson here. We tend to think of real estate as buildings and land. Maui reminds us that communities are systems. Housing requires roads, water, sewer, electricity and access. And people need more than four walls. They need schools, businesses, neighbors, parks and familiar places.

Rebuilding Lahaina therefore cannot simply mean replacing the buildings that burned. It means rebuilding a community while preserving the history and culture that made Lahaina special. It also means asking difficult questions about evacuation routes, infrastructure, housing affordability and how to make the community more resilient when the next disaster comes.

Oklahoma may be thousands of miles away, but we understand disasters. Tornadoes, wildfires, floods and ice storms have taught us how quickly the built environment can change.

Perhaps disaster preparedness is not simply emergency management. It is also real estate planning. In a few hours, I will board an airplane and leave Maui. The families living in those small homes I passed today cannot leave the fire behind quite so easily. Buildings can disappear in minutes. Housing takes longer. And rebuilding a community takes longer still.

Dr. J. David Chapman is the Chair of Finance and Professor of Real Estate at The University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu)