Maui Boat Captains Go From Wildfire Rescue Heroes to Collecting Unemployment After Canceled Tours

As Maui residents struggle to recover from the devastating Lahaina wildfire, some of the boat captains who risked their lives to save others from the fire are now unemployed and unsure of their futures. 

When the wildfire broke out on August 8, killing over a hundred people and injuring and displacing even more, Anna Lieding, a boat captain, rushed to the harbor, the New Yorker reports.

Lieding and several other captains, who usually run tourist expeditions, were tasked with searching for the people who fled into the sea, while flames consumed their town. The captain said that she struggled to see and breathe, as the boat approached the still blazing island. 

“We watched things that we grew up with burn away on the shoreline,” Lieding told the New Yorker.  “I will remember what that looks like forever, burning.”

The boat captains searched for survivors and bodies, well into the early morning hours. They successfully located some people and saved multiple young children from both the fire and the ocean, according to the New Yorker. 

But as Lahaina struggles to emerge from the disaster, the rapid decline in tourism has left Lieding and her colleagues without work. In the days after her rescue mission, Lieding applied for unemployment. 

Leiding told the New Yorker she believes that her employer should be safe in the long run because “they’ve always grown slowly and lived well below their means.”

In the short term, however, no tourism means no work for Lieding and her colleagues. 

Many Maui locals have condemned tourist activity, while their island copes with the trauma of Lahaina’s near-total destruction. 

In spite of this, leaders like Hawaii Governor Josh Green have said that tourists should continue to visit the parts of Maui that weren’t directly affected by the fires because the Hawaiian economy depends on tourism.

“All of our people will need to survive, and we can't afford to have no jobs or no future for our children,” Green said, according to Reuters. 

"When you restrict any travel to a region, you really devastate its own local residents in many ways more than anyone else."