For Ernesto Perez, life on Maui wasn’t easy. But it was pleasant and peaceful, and a long way from the cartel violence of Mexico that his family escaped nearly three decades ago. He became a chef, serving the flow of tourists that propelled the local economy, and found a home a short walk from the shimmering waters of the Pacific Ocean in the historic town of Lahaina.
He got married, had four daughters, got divorced and found love again. Then in 2023 the fires came, consuming his home and claiming his job, and he was confronted with a choice: Stay or go? His mother invited him to return to Mexico, but he said he would never raise his daughters amid the violence of the drug trade that overshadows his homeland. Eventually, he was drawn to Las Vegas, a place that has attracted so many Hawaii residents in recent years that it has been called the Ninth Island.
These days, Perez works as a cook at the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, dreaming of his lost paradise and worrying about the toll on his family. “I lived a block from the beach in Lahaina,” said Perez, 42. “My daughters would go to the beach, they would go shopping by themselves.
I didn’t have to worry. Here there’s a lot of danger for my girls.” One year after a wildfire incinerated Lahaina, killing 102 people in the deadliest fire in the United States in more than a century, residents on Maui struggle to find work and housing.
Some still live in hotels, while others cannot find apartments they can afford..