Tim Horton, board member of CERT, presents a small gift of love and respect almost a year after the terrible island fire

They were on their way to Maui airport to catch their flight back to Malibu when The Malibu Times called her after reading this post on social media: “I did something fun today. While traveling through Lahaina, Maui, I presented the staff at the Lahaina Station of the Maui Fire Department with a baseball cap from the City of Malibu’s Malibu Fire Safety Division. They were very gracious and appreciated the gift. I explained that this was a gift of solidarity as we also had a devastating wildfire in our recent history.”

What a loving idea to share such a wonderful memorial to the resilience of two small communities battling the destruction of wildfires.

“Can you tell me about the small gift given to the firefighters who were on duty at the Maui Fire Department’s Lahaina Fire Station?” this reporter asked.

Tim Horton, a board member of Malibu’s Community Emergency Response Team, and his social media assistant paused before responding.

Did he plan this in advance, perhaps even bringing a camera crew along just to get the right shot? No.

Rather, he just wanted to stop by and show some love and care from brother to brother to express his support for Lahaina.

“I just felt how poignant it is that they are marking the one-year anniversary of their devastation, which is still so horrific and clearly visible when you try to visit the town of Lahaina,” Horton said.

Then the two of us — a reporter in Malibu and Horton and his wife, talking on the phone in the car on the way from Maui — shared one of those long moments of silence in which participants try to process the memory of trauma.

Finally, Horton sighed sadly and said, “Driving through the part of the burn area that people are allowed to enter is reminiscent of driving through Pt. Dume or our other fire-ravaged neighborhoods after the Woolsey Fire – so many properties that once had houses are just desolate and scarred by burns.”

Many reading this will recognize the reporter’s fairly predictable next question – asked out of fear of the answer.

“How is the beautiful old banyan tree in the center of Lahaina Town?” I asked.

“We wanted to visit, but that part of the city is completely cordoned off,” Horton replied. “The entire neighborhood where the tragedy occurred is still cordoned off, but locals told us that the tree will survive and that it is only 70 percent healthy. A team of arborists is working on its recovery.”

Honor. Hope. Respect. Awe

The Hortons shared details of their visit to the memorials, which featured pictures of some of the 100 or so victims.

“The Lahaina Memorial is a place of honor, hope, respect and awe,” reads a plaque. “Here, division and politics have no place – this is a place to walk humbly, to mourn, to seek peace and to reflect on all that we have lost.”

Horton and his wife said, “We could see that they were preparing a stage for some kind of ceremony on August 8th to mark the first anniversary of their terrible fire.”

Meanwhile, the world’s second largest banyan tree, planted in Lahaina Town in 1873 and also a place of honor, hope, respect and awe for over 50 years, is slowly healing and even beginning to sprout new leaves. It has been embraced by thousands in Lahaina through its numerous branches alone. No doubt it does so in the hope that the people who love it, both locals and enthusiastic visitors, can continue to help Lahaina, the interior and all of Maui find new hope.

Join her – and the Hortons – in a global moment of silence at noon on Sunday, August 11, during an interfaith day of hope and prayer led by religious leaders of the churches and temples destroyed in the fire.

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