Editor’s note: Tom Holowach of Oahu volunteered for the Red Cross for the first time following the Maui wildfires. This is the final of four Community Voices about his experience. The opinions expressed are not those of the American Red Cross or Civil Beat.

When you fly from Honolulu to Maui, the plane ascends to altitude, the captain turns off the seatbelt light, and passengers rush for the bathroom while attendants pass out water and POG. In what seems like two minutes, comes the announcement to return to your seats and prepare for landing in Kahului.

That’s the brief, middle phase this Disaster Operation is in right now. The Red Cross got 7,500 people housed, and now people from our Shelter Resident Transition team are fanning out to counsel every head of household about their plans for the future.

One of our kupuna, “S,” lived in a senior independent living apartment above town. The managers recently sent her an email, about her priority status for placement at the top of the waiting list for another of their nine facilities.

“S” remarks that you have to wait for somebody to die to get a place off that list. She has a heart of gold, but masks it with sarcasm and crankiness. She has good reason to be guarded.

“S” had heard a neighbor yelling “fire,” and being ambulatory, escaped down Lahainaluna Road in her car. She got marooned in that jam on Front Street as the fire approached, so she ran for it. Someone picked her up and they escaped to safety.

But then when the doctors at the hospital examined her, they found skin cancer. I mean — seriously?

But you know what? Otherwise, she might never have known, and it turns out that it is nonfatal.

Mysterious ways, as they say. But “S” lost eight friends, who patiently sat in their wheelchairs, waiting for a bus that never made it. My secret goal is to find her a place before I go home. No promises.

That morning, Civil Beat ran an article about a House Subcommittee setting up to investigate FEMA, spurred by a visit to Maui by then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He had quietly stayed at our hotel, away from attention.

When I tried to park and had to wait for two black SUV’s followed by three white press vans, I realized that it was a designated “protectee.” Fortunately, he was guided by our House representative, Jill Tokuda, who probably perhaps tempered some of his “gotcha” accusations designed to impeach the current administration.

Our SRT team leader, “P,” was determined to fill in all missing information in our shelter database and clear all obstacles for their wraparound care benefits. A few were missing their FEMA numbers, because of a huge misinformation campaign that claimed if you signed up with them, you would somehow lose your property.

This might be one of the first natural disasters where conspiracy theories and resentment against government organizations is causing the tragedy to continue unnecessarily. The Red Cross is an independent, donor-supported operation, but to many, we unhelpfully got lumped in with the so-called “Deep State.”

One of our favorite survivors was a funny Samoan named “U,” who seemingly had about eight grown sons, who had all excelled at sports and other things: pro football, UFC championship, and even the Maui Emergency Management Agency. His estranged wife had fed him all the untrue conspiracies about the government, so he had signed up with Red Cross, but not FEMA.

SRT needed a FEMA number to get him everything he deserved. I decided I needed to have a heart-to-heart with our buddies, but when I went outside, they had disappeared.

I called the number of one FEMA friend, and asked where they were.

“We’re, uh, itinerating today.”

Dammit, they were hiding from reporters, because of that headline.

“Is FEMA anywhere I can find them?”

He said they were doing a job fair in Maalaea. I thanked him, grabbed the keys of our pool rental car, and told my supervisor, “I’m going on a quest for the lair of a secret society.”

Maui Ocean Center had pop-up tents whipped by the daily Kihei gales. One official told me there might still be someone at a particular hotel in Kaanapali. The Lahaina Bypass Road drops you down onto Honoapiilani Highway where Lahaina Gateway Center is across from The Cannery Mall. There are black fabric fences in front of Safeway and Longs, hiding the destruction. But the fence ends nearby.

I wasn’t ready for what I saw, though I had seen it on TV. The absolute destruction of everything on both sides of the highway is as bad as you can imagine. But seeing places I had personally known for 40 years, reduced to ashes —people’s homes and their entire lives — just gone. It’s like a punch in the gut.

Close musician friends of mine live on that mauka slope, in a house on Hawaiian Homelands that their dear mother had waited all her life for and gotten shortly before she passed. It was still there, just two doors away from the conflagration. Mahalo ke Akua.

I found two FEMA guys in the Kaanapali hotel and asked if there was an actual human being, with a phone number, that Red Cross could call and cross-reference their SRT database with FEMA. They walked me over to a nice lady from Mississippi, who wrote a name and number on a piece of paper, that was worth more than gold at that moment.

As I thanked her, I looked around and realized that I had found the super-secret FEMA HQ, whose location could absolutely not be divulged. I can’t tell you where it is, because someday when I least expect it, I imagine someone might sneak up and hit me over the head with a black rock.

Returning to my shelter, I gave the magic number to “P,” and her eyes widened. She tried it and it worked. All seven missing numbers cleared up almost immediately.

“Pass it on, go forth and multiply,” I joked.

And by the way, there’s a website that nobody seems to know about, where the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corporation updates daily a list of available rentals on all islands. Why I know it and not anyone else in the Red Cross is beyond me, but I plan to do something about that. I want to create a way for all important information to be cross-posted between all agencies, and maybe even carried on Maui cable-access Channel 55.

But that is for another trip. It’s been three weeks already.

I returned home to a real bed and a happy wife. When I left, we had three kittens. Now they seem to be actual cats.

In life, things can change quickly. For the survivors on Maui, the first part of their transition came unexpectedly, in an instant. I am afraid that the next part is going to be very difficult, and take much, much too long.