Creating fire-free homesteads

A civic action toolkit for wildfire mitigation — rooted in Indigenous knowledge, community organizing, and collective action

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Large-scale wildfires are not native to Hawaiʻi.

Once, the main causes were volcanoes and rare lightning strikes, and damage was minimal. Over the past 200 years, people introduced plants, animals, materials, ways of living, and values that turned the islands into tinderboxes.

Now, WE are the cause of nearly all fires — nearly 1,000 per year, burning more than 20,000 acres.

But Kaheāwai and our partners believe that a different future is possible, and that our keiki deserve to live in a world where they can take care of their ʻāina and their ʻāina can take care of them.

We created this toolkit to center, amplify, and support the expertise, hopes and dreams, and ongoing needs of community leaders who have been working tirelessly to build a fire-free future for the next generation.

We hope this toolkit inspires and equips everyone to take action — whether that’s making your own home safer, making your community safer, or investing in those already doing the work to keep us all safer.

This toolkit centers experts from Native Hawaiian homesteads, because their unique geography, history, and culture has helped cultivate an expertise rooted in deep relationships with ʻāina and community. The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act (1920), created through the efforts of Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, specifically sought to return Hawaiians to ʻāina, strengthen Hawaiian families, and support self-sufficient communities connected to place. 

With Hawaiʻi facing unique climate-related challenges, place-based expertise is more needed than ever, and the homesteaders featured in this toolkit bring an abundance.

Firewise (a national program led locally by Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization), has helped homesteads across Hawaiʻi deepen that expertise through community-led wildfire preparedness and mitigation, supporting them in protecting their homes, ʻāina, and future generations — including through invaluable contributions to this toolkit.

Why this toolkit is essential now

On New Year’s Eve 2023, four month after the Maui fires killed 102 people, an illegal firework ignited a hillside in between Papakōlea, Kewalo, and Kalāwahine homesteads, threatening to trap residents in the valley, and invoking a fear that their community might become the next Lāhainā (even near urban Honolulu, people are at extremely high-risk for wildfires).

Within weeks, community members from all three homesteads came together to form Nā Leo o Papakōlea Firewise, vowing to do whatever work was needed to keep their community safe.

Our partnership with NLOP Firewise started in the summer of 2024, as they were looking for ways to share their story and warn their community about wildfires.

Since then, their small team has poured countless hours into educating, organizing, and activating their community — with impressive results:

Other impacts, while harder to measure, have been equally invaluable:

NLOP Firewise’s team has learned a lot, from running effective community workdays, to hiring trustworthy vendors, to building relationships across divided communities.

Fortunately, they’ve also been able to learn from other Firewise communities, like Kahikinui, a rural Maui homestead on the south side of Haleakalā, that became a Firewise community in 2016 but has battled fires since the 1990s. Their track record has been equally as impressive:

Wildfire mitigation is expensive. The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands recently told our partners it would cost at least $800,000 to remove an abandoned home that poses a fire risk to residents.

But fires are far, far more expensive. Recovery costs from the Lāhainā fire are expected to reach $12,000,000,000 — yes, $12 BILLION, or 60% of the entire state budget for a year.

“If we don’t do the work of keeping each other safe, there’s going to be bigger costs to having to take care of us afterward.”

Noel Shaw, NLOP Firewise

Everyone has a role to play, beyond just sharing this story, and we hope this toolkit offers pathways for you to take action.

How to navigate this toolkit

Everyone has a different role to play, so we’ve curated four paths through this toolkit based on some common roles our partners identified in their work. Select one to get started.

Which best describes you?