Three years after the Maui fires, the emergency is in the lungs

LAHAINA — Disaster coverage has a plot, and the plot ends when the fire is out. The people who lived in the plot do not get that ending. Three years after the Maui wildfires, survivors are still dealing with persistent health problems, PBS NewsHour reported Wednesday — the dull, unphotogenic sequel of smoke, mold, stress, and a health system that was not built for a town that burned.

Wildfire is a chemical event pretending to be a weather event. Households, cars, plastics, treated wood, and soil become a plume and then a dust. The plume is an emergency. The dust is a chronic condition. Clinics see the second story: coughs that do not resolve, anxiety that does not resolve, a housing situation that makes both worse.

If there is a national lesson, it is not “be resilient,” a word that has been asked to do too much. It is that recovery funding which stops at rebuilding structures is a half-policy. Lungs are infrastructure. So are the people who used to work in the hotel that is now a fenced lot.