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WEKU
Bill Chappell

This cafe never closed after Lahaina's fires, extending a lifeline of normalcy

Cori Gross, bartender at Java Jazz, greets residents with bursts of joy to see that they've survived the fires. (Claire Harbage/NPR)

MAUI, Hawaii -- It might seem odd for a restaurant on the edge of a disaster zone to stay open.

But Java Jazz, a cafe just a few miles from Lahaina's scorched downtown, never shut down after the Aug. 8 catastrophe. While dozens of businesses shuttered, it kept serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, giving a lifeline of normalcy to locals, emergency workers, and tourists who had nowhere else to go.

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