Two months after a devastating wildfire whipped through Lahaina in August 2023, Pam Reader was allowed back to see what was left of her home. With a heavy heart, she returned to the Hawaiian oceanside town now filled with endless blocks of burned houses. As she rounded her corner, she saw the only thing remaining was her bright turquoise mailbox.
There was one shaped like a fish, some built into lava rock walls, and other metal ones. She and her daughters had painted their mailbox when the girls were young, with drawings of fish, butterflies and surfboards. As fire victims have started to return to Lahaina after going through the process of rebuilding their homes, dozens of these mailboxes have become useless.
Residents say they’re not getting mail service. They see mail carriers drive by without stopping, only to make deliveries a couple blocks away – to houses that didn’t burn. When Cox moved back in February, he stopped by the main post office to re-register his Lahaina address.
When the postmaster looked up his house, he said the United States Postal Service, USPS, didn’t yet have a neighborhood route re-established because not enough new homes had been completed. He told Cox to check back in a month. Cox went back several times over several months, and still didn’t get any clarity.
In July, he filed a complaint with the agency’s federal headquarters. After a back-and-forth with a customer relations specialist for USPS’s Hawaii district, Cox got an answer. Cox was told Lahaina’s reconstruction was being treated as “new development”, and under current USPS policy that means no door-to-door mail service.
Cox said this was shocking, considering Lahaina was a centuries-old town and the first capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom. In 1962, the National Park Service even took the rare step of designating downtown Lahaina as a “national historic landmark”. To get mail, fire victims have to go to the main post office branch, which is more than two miles away.
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