Twisted and charred aluminum blended with shards of glass nonetheless traces the ground of the economic warehouse the place Victoria Martocci as soon as operated her scuba diving enterprise. After a wildfire tore by means of West Maui, all that remained of her 36-foot boat, the Prolonged Horizons II, had been a pair of engines.

That was six months in the past, however Ms. Martocci and her husband, Erik Stein, who’re weighing whether or not to rebuild the enterprise, which he began in 1983, mentioned the identical questions stuffed their ideas. “What is going to this island appear like?” Ms. Martocci requested. “Will issues ever be near being the identical?”

In early August, what started as a brush fireplace burst into the city of Lahaina, a preferred vacationer vacation spot, all however leveling it, destroying massive swaths of West Maui and killing at the least 100 individuals within the nation’s deadliest wildfire in additional than a century.

The native economic system stays in disaster.

Rebuilding the city, in line with some estimates, will price greater than $5 billion and take a number of years. And tense divisions nonetheless stay over whether or not Lahaina, whose economic system lengthy relied nearly fully on tourism, ought to contemplate a brand new approach ahead.

Debates concerning the ethics of touring to decimated vacationer locations performed out on social media after an earthquake in Morocco and wildfires in Greece final 12 months. However the scenario is especially dire for Maui.

State and federal officers scrambled final summer season to seek out shelter for 1000’s of residents who had misplaced their properties, relocating individuals to native motels and short-term leases the place many nonetheless stay, usually sharing a wall with vacationing households whose realities really feel removed from their very own. Different displaced residents stay in tents on the seashore, and a few restaurant homeowners pivoted to figuring out of meals vans.

About 600 small companies — half the quantity registered in Lahaina earlier than the fires — are nonetheless not operational, in line with the Hawaii Small Enterprise Growth Middle.

A latest report from the College of Hawaii Financial Analysis Group predicted that statewide customer spending this 12 months would decline about 5 %, or $1 billion, from 2023. The decline in tourism is nearly utterly confined to Maui, in line with the report.

Carl Bonham, the group’s government director, mentioned the scope and velocity of Maui’s restoration remained an open query. It relies upon, Mr. Bonham mentioned, on a number of elements, together with how briskly “displaced residents could be moved from motels to extra everlasting housing, the velocity of ongoing cleanup work, the extent and period of assist applications.”

Within the weeks after the fires, politicians, Hollywood film stars, native activists and even the state’s tourism authority urged vacationers to keep away from parts of the devastated island.

“Maui just isn’t the place to have your trip proper now,” the actor Jason Momoa, a local of Hawaii, wrote on Instagram. “Don’t persuade your self that your presence is required on an island that’s struggling this deeply.”

These messages, some right here consider, have had a lingering impact on tourism.

A month after the fires, Gov. Josh Inexperienced, a Democrat, introduced that West Maui communities round Lahaina would formally reopen in October. It was an try, he mentioned in an interview, to save lots of the native economic system.

“If we weren’t clear and really direct about once we had been going to reopen, then the lingering results of uncertainty would destroy all the economic system on Maui,” Mr. Inexperienced mentioned. “Individuals weren’t coming again.”

Regardless of the proclamation, the return has been sluggish. Many enterprise homeowners have lately acquired approval for reconstruction loans from the U.S. Small Enterprise Administration. The company has accepted roughly $290 million in loans — about $101 million for companies and practically $189 million for properties. The state and several other nonprofit teams have additionally rolled out grant cash to assist small-business homeowners.

However life in Lahaina nonetheless looks like limbo.

Tanna Swanson, an in depth pal of Ms. Martocci and Mr. Stein, spends lots of time on the couple’s home north of Lahaina, doing 2,000-piece puzzles to assist cross time and distract herself. She owned the Maui Visitor Home, a five-bedroom bed-and-breakfast that burned within the fires. It was her residence as properly.

She has stayed, since then, in a stream of motels and couch-surfed at pals’ properties, transferring eight instances. In December, Ms. Swanson, 66, acquired a Small Enterprise Administration mortgage for $270,000.

She wouldn’t have acquired it — the mountains of paperwork and emotional toll of the method had lengthy deterred her, she mentioned — if she had not met in individual with a Small Enterprise Administration consultant who got here to Maui to satisfy with enterprise homeowners.

She hopes to see extra such direct outreach, she mentioned, to cut back bureaucratic delays.

On a latest afternoon, Ms. Swanson used her customer’s cross to get into her neighborhood, which the native authorities have blocked off to forestall looting of burned properties.

The desolate swimming pool and some melted metal tackle numbers on a concrete wall are all that stay of the bed-and-breakfast, the place, since 1988, she had welcomed friends from all over the world, who took in ocean views from the highest deck.

She appeared on the scorched palm bushes and thought of her former staff — 5 on the time of the fires — and the way, like her, they’d misplaced their livelihoods in a single day.

“My every part — gone in a matter of moments,” she mentioned. “It’s not simply me. It’s the entire group, the entire island.”

An hour away, alongside two-lane roads the place a couple of vacationers nonetheless pull over to glimpse humpback whales within the waters under, Britney Alejo-Fishell owns Haku Maui.

Her store in Makawao, a rural stretch of Maui removed from Lahaina, sells conventional Hawaiian leis and holds workshops to create them. A lot of her enterprise comes from celebrations amongst vacationers, who prior to now flocked to the island. That has all however dried up, mentioned Ms. Alejo-Fishell, who mentioned her earnings dropped 80 % final fall after the fires. Since then, she has seen a slight uptick.

Earlier than instructing a lei-making class on a latest morning, she mentioned the troubles her family-owned enterprise had confronted in recent times. She was compelled to shutter her enterprise for a 12 months throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, after which, just a few months after enterprise started to select as much as prepandemic ranges, the fires engulfed West Maui. She has been residing off a diminished earnings and is hesitant to tackle authorities loans.

“The cellphone began ringing with cancellations of orders, and it’s been ongoing,” she mentioned. “We had survived Covid, however now this is sort of a second Covid scenario over again.”

A Native Hawaiian, Ms. Alejo-Fishell mentioned the wildfires had affected many acquaintances, together with pals who misplaced family members and their properties.

“They’re grieving and will probably be for a while,” she mentioned. However, she added, “tourism is our economic system, and we want it to outlive.”

Again in Lahaina, the tragedy of Aug. 8 performs on repeat for Ms. Martocci. She had a scuba expedition scheduled for that day however canceled it due to excessive winds. Hoping to examine on the warehouse, she and Mr. Stein rushed down the Honoapiʻilani Freeway, which was choked with visitors due to downed energy traces and the rising rush of evacuees. The couple circled, however they spoke on the cellphone with Ms. Swanson, who advised them she had evacuated and seen thick black smoke, which signifies a structural fireplace, within the route of their warehouse.

“We didn’t know if it was gone, however we had a sense,” Ms. Martocci mentioned.

In latest months, she and Mr. Stein have began salvaging their enterprise. They thought-about whether or not it made sense to maneuver, however Ms. Martocci had by no means felt extra at peace than within the clear blue waters off Maui.

Lately, they’ve labored with the Small Enterprise Administration and have acquired a $700,000 mortgage. However at 64, Mr. Stein is uneasy about taking up the debt he would wish to rebuild, particularly contemplating how a lot uncertainty stays.

He wants a renewed allow with the state’s boating division to run his enterprise, however to get one he wants a ship — and for now, the marine facility they’ve used for the previous 40 years stays partly closed.

“We’re in such a holding sample,” he mentioned. “There is no such thing as a sense of when it’s going to loosen up.”

Ms. Martocci mentioned she had come to think about their group as a painful Venn diagram, by which everybody is aware of somebody who misplaced a liked one, a house or a enterprise. Some misplaced all three.

“The place all of us knew and liked is perpetually modified,” she mentioned. “We simply know we’ve got to maintain transferring ahead and discover some sense of normalcy.”