be open and honest with each other and making sure that that is understood, and that s carried from the beginning to the end. reporter: you also understand have to understand the historical context. since can t cook in the 1700s tried to kidnap the king of hawaii and was stabbed to death in the surf and then since the generations after that, the u.s. marines unlawfully staged a coup to take this kingdom of hawaii so a lot of hurt feelings here, a lot of trust has been eroded by the response and a lot of people watching the rebuilding effort to see if these people are included, jim. all right, bill weir, great reporting as always. thanks so much for the time. can t wait to get you back on to talk about this important topic. just keeps coming up over and over again. folk, you got to listen to bill s reporting on all of this. it s essential. bill weir, thanks so much. appreciate it. for more information about how you can help hawaii wildfire victims go to cnn.com/impact or
move to rebuilding and housing people in a more permanent way. that is such an important point. many people ask about maui rebuilding and, really, now at this stage they are simply thinking about recovering, about understanding exactly who has been lost. fema is already said it will likely pass $5.5 billion us to rebuild but many people we ve been speaking to here on maui have also been raising questions about how they will rebuild. keepin about how they will rebuild. keep in mind, lahaina is largely was, because so many of those historic buildings have been raised to the ground, this beautiful old historic former capital of the royal kingdom of hawaii and those buildings are gone now. people are asking about how it will be rebuilt and they also say, you know, please don t let the developers come in and build luxury high rise tourist housing and leave the residents of lahaina,
never seen anything like the fire storm that obliterated lahaina. going slow ly with the boat. we re like, the house didn t survive. now there s a brush fire. and within five minutes, the whole thing was engulfed. there was nobody there to put anything out. we re just pulling into lahaina now, just getting our first glimpse of this town af hearing this nightmarish stories, and it is worse than you can imagine. it looks like a bomb went off here, just utter scorched devastation everywhere. melted boats in the harbor. reporter: what was once the capital of the kingdom of hawaii and one of the most well preserved towns in the nation is ash, including bill wyeman s art gallery. he said he escaped the flames on his harley-davidson, riding around cars trapped. i took the motorcycle.
anything like the firestorm that obliterated lahaina. you can see a little smolder of smoke. like oh, the house survived, but now there is a little brush fire. we are just pulling into lahaina now, first clips this town after hearing stories. it is worse than you can imagine. it is a world war two set. a scorched devastation. what was once the capitol of the kingdom of hawaii. one of the most well-preserved towns in the nation, is ash, including bill weiland s famous art gallery. he said he escaped the flames on his harley-davidson, riding around evacuees, trapped between fire and ocean. everyone else jumping in the water, flames were shooting over the top, i didn t even
out? reporter: pulling into lahaina now, getting our first glimpse and it s worse than you can imagine. it looks like a world war ii set, like a bomb went off here, utter scorched devastation everywhere. melted boats in the harbor. what was once the capital of the kingdom of hawaii and one of the most well preserved towns in the nation is ash. including this art gallery, he escaped the flames on his harley davidson riding around evacuees trapped between fire and ocean. i took the car instead of motorcycle, i took the everybody else jumping in water. flames were shooting over the top coming at i didn t want to look behind me because i knee they were behind me. that s what happened to all the people, i think, all those cars sitting waiting for someone to move in front of them, no one was moving in tfront of them. they jumped in the ocean. a lot of them didn t make it,