For generations, the banyan tree along Lahaina town's historic Front Street served as a gathering place. Like the town itself, its very survival is now in question, its limbs scorched by a devastating fire that has wiped away generations of history.
The tree was just an 8-foot sapling when it was planted in 1873, a gift shipped from India to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first Protestant mission in Lahaina. It was planted a quarter century before the Hawaiian Islands became a U.S. territory and seven decades after King Kamehameha declared Lahaina the capital of his kingdom.
“It’s burned, but I looked at the trunk and the roots and I think it’s going to make it,” she said. “It was kind of this diamond in the rough of hope.” A flyover of historic Lahaina shows entire neighborhoods that had been a vibrant vision of color and island life reduced to gray ash. Block after block is nothing but rubble and blackened foundations, including along famous Front Street, where tourists shopped and dined just days ago.
It’s unclear what sparked the fire, which quickly raced toward town Tuesday evening. The flames were fanned by brisk winds and fueled by dry vegetation in nearby hills. When the ferocious blaze swept into the historic town, many of the wooden buildings didn’t stand a chance and were quickly turned into heaps of ashes.
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