A request on the Trains Magazine list notes that there are severe wildfires reported on Maui and asks if any equipment is endangered or damaged.

Poster on Trainorders found a picture in a post-fire gallery showing the Lahaina depot burned to the ground, along with the turntable. The steam locomotive displayed next to the depot also got burned over.

The latest burned area detection maps on the FIRMS website shows the southern half of the railroad line to be burned over. As per that the fire had not (yet) reached the northern end, where the railroad's equipment is stored.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

Quick map I pulled together showing the railroad in relation to the last 24 hours or so of MODIS burned area detection data.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

From a coworker who lives in the area, she says all of downtown Lahaina is ashes, including the 'train stuff' there.

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/gallery/2 ... avoc-maui/

There's a shot in here of the turntable and #5. It's currently image 14 of 30.

Let's see which way the fire moves, etc.

This was a post about 3 hours ago on the PacificNG.org Facebook page:

The fire to reach "downtown" Lahaina most likely ran through the former Pioneer Mill site which contained a display of sugar industry artifacts including to small locomotives that went though a fire in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles several decades ago.

Wow, those people got really hit hard. The devastation looks like Hiroshima or Nagasaki after the A-bomb drop. Those pictures are humbling. Makes me in gratitude for a minor draught and occasional close call with tornadoes in my part of the world. First I heard about any of this.

Regards, John.

IIRC, wasn’t the shop complex up in Kaanapali, north of Lahaina?

But wow, what a tragedy for the town and people there.

Yes the shop was several miles North of the village of Lahaina. There were two steam locos, and a Plymouth there, several years ago.

Very sad situation.

LK&P before fire (streetview)

LK&P after fire

I see the lettering on the locomotive wasn't burned off. Looks much better than a locomotive in an enginehouse fire, but I wonder about the gauges, etc.

Nick

Notice the vegetation. Already you can see the risks in a dry period. Just like California.

Took these during a visit to Lahaina in 2016. The other loco was located in the site of the Lahaina sugar mill. This outdoor museum had a number of sugar mill equipment displayed.

I was looking at a news article following up on Lahaina, and the efforts/struggle to cope, recover, and also search for normalcy, and the following photo was included:



My question is - depending on how the equipment on the northern side of the line did in the fire - looking at this photo and the tracks in the foreground - is there a potential for the line to play a role in rebuilding Lahaina, and bringing tourism back? Yes, the railroad had closed, and I'm not sure the residents want to see a steam locomotive running there just yet. I know that search efforts for the affected areas are still ongoing, and probably will be for a while. But it looks like some of the other infrastructure elements, at least through parts of downtown Lahaina (minus the buildings) are intact. So - could this be a way to help the area recover, whether it be via supply delivery, work trains, and eventually for tourism?