LAHAINA, Hawaii (KHON2) -- Among the many living things affected by the Lahaina fire -- Front Street's long-standing banyan tree is making its recovery.
Now, it stands as a symbol of resilience for the community. The 151-year-old tree holds scars after being burnt a year ago during the catastrophic fire.
Crews removed about 50% of its mass but worked to keep its remains within the park. Thursday morning on Take2, Royal Lahaina Chief Engineer and Treecovery's Duane Sparkman joined us to talk story about the tree's survival.
"We've got about 50% of it completely healthy and pushing out brand new leaves and aerial roots," Sparkman said. "It's happening on that portion of the tree. We have obviously removed about 50% of that tree's mass that had desiccated. Only a small portion of it caught fire and it was just the ambient heat from the relative buildings right around it that caused it to dry out. We had to remove those sections so there are parts of it that are cut down and gone. We've turned it into mulch and put it back in the park."
Size and shade are some of the things that kept the tree alive during the hellish blaze.
"It created its own shape layer so it was able to put out most of the embers underneath it and not catch fire. So much so that it did not allow the fire to reach the restroom at the Lahaina Harbor. There was a homeless lady hunkered down inside of it and she survived the fire. The Banyan Tree pretty much saved her life so it is a beautiful symbol of resilience," Sparkman said.
He and the folks at Treecovery have taken clones of the Lahaina Banyan Tree and are planting it back in the park and regrowing it back to itself.
"It's going to take decades to get there but we've gotta be patient and we've just got to let it beautify itself," Sparkman said. "We have everything here on island to keep it healthy and thriving and we're going to do that."
They're also working to get residents' trees back on their property.
"We partnered with a handful of folks and we have this group called Treecovery and what we're doing is we are purchasing trees and giving them back to the victims that lost all of their trees in the burn zones of Lahaina and Kula. We plan on expanding. Our whole thing is to collect funds, buy trees now. We have surveys out we're collecting all the data from the landowners and we're finding out what trees they lost and what trees they want back and we are searching those trees. We are not allowing invasive species to be brought in and we're trying to do our best to keep any biosecurity safe to keep this area of the island protected as best as we can."
