The fire that still burns: the mental health crisis unfolding among Maui’s children

The eight-year-old daughter of Miguel and Lindsay Ceballos, in their hotel room on a golf course in Kapalua, Maui, on 29 October. Photograph: Akasha Rabut/The Guardian

When the destructive summer blaze swept across Lahaina, in west Maui, Maryann Kobatake’s nephew helped ferry a friend’s grandmother and cousins to safety. On the drive out of a burning Front Street, the town’s main thoroughfare, she said the 18-year-old heard screams and witnessed carnage that haunts him still.

He has not discussed what he saw with her or other family members. “I don’t think he wants to relive it by talking,” she said, adding that she had tried to get him to open up to her. “Because he’s had it tough in life, I think that’s just how he copes with it.”