Canyon Lake kids’ notes impacting Maui children

By Bob Burns
Special to The Friday Flyer

We have just returned from our most recent trip to Lahaina. We were staying just north of Lahaina for a week. While there, we had time to connect with many of the impacted families.

We were actually made aware that an additional two of my long-time contacts from the restaurant industry, and their families, had lost their homes and everything in them. Due to all of your generous donations, we were able to give them an envelope with some cash, just a little something to help them out.

At the Canyon Lake HarborFest, the Canyon Lake Yacht Club had a table set up where kids could use crayons and color in some Hawaii-themed templates, such as turtles, beaches, and palm trees.  We collected all of these drawings and took them to Maui on this trip.

Many of the drawings had messages written on them like “hope you are doing better soon.” We were able to distribute these pictures to the various resorts (that were housing disaster victims), as well as local elementary schools.

I took a picture of the many beautiful drawings created by our Canyon Lake kids posted at one of the resorts for all of the impacted families to enjoy.  Our Canyon Lake kids probably do not realize it, but they have just passed on a little “Aloha” from the mainland to the families and children affected by the Lahaina fires. Mahalo to all of them for their efforts.

As we visited the disaster victims we could see that they were OK with clothes and food. They are currently staying in the resorts, but with the resorts opening back up, they are worried about where they will be able to go next.

Last week, two months after the fire, they just started to let people return to their homes in groups of only 12 families at a time. The area is still considered a hazardous toxic area due to the asbestos and arsenic in the blowing ashes. Hopefully, as people are finally able to return to their homes, it will help to bring a little closure for them so they can move on to the next step.

With electricity, internet, and electronic services coming back up, we hopefully can do any business we need to do there electronically rather than flying over to deliver aid. With your help, we definitely filled a need to get cash in the hands of those who most needed it, when no one else could get cash over there. Pat yourselves on the back, because you are the ones who made it all possible. We did something that no one else was able to do at the time.

We have received numerous thank you notes from the folks we have helped, and in this next week, I will post some of them on our GoFundMe page, so that you can all see how appreciative everyone is to all of you that had them in your hearts.