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Images of smoldering landscapes have been coming out of Hawaii for as long as there’s been photography. But those pictures were ultimately about creation. The archipelago is among the youngest pieces of land on earth, built around the volcanos reaching from the sea floor. So what every eruption announced was essentially another addition. And if flowing lava took houses, or even whole neighborhoods on its way to augment the island’s coast, that destruction happened slowly—and with so much warning that professional photographers had time to gather from around the world to document it.
Lahaina vanished in less than a day and without warning. The destruction was unalloyed. A brush fire that sprang back to life on the afternoon of Aug. 8 had, by mid-morning, reduced every building and vehicle in the historic city of 13,000 to the color of ash. The death toll, which stood at 96 on Aug. 14, made it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than 100 years, and the search for victims is far from over.
The night sky over the city’s harbor glowed orange, but the only images of the flames were captured by citizen journalists holding up camera phones as the embers rode howling winds to the next bit of fuel in a leeward region whose famously dry, hot summers had been aggravated by drought. At least 2,200 structures burned to the ground. Some people survived by fleeing into the sea.
What awaited news photographers—including David Butow, on assignment for TIME—was the human effort to navigate the brutal topography of climate change. “The particular skills of the local culture came into play immediately,” he writes from Maui. “Rescuers and relief supplies were ferried in a range of craft, from large tourist boats, to jet skis and traditional Hawaiian canoes.”
“The island,” Butow says, “is like a collection of small towns tied together,” and, at a church service where locals gathered to sing and support one another, one group “even made use of techniques developed to cure and store food in jars designed to last months on seafaring journeys.”
Spencer Kim helps clear debris at the ruins of a house belonging to a friend in the small hillside town of Kula on Aug. 12.
David Butow for TIME
A car damaged from the fires in Kula on Aug. 12.
David Butow for TIME
At the first Sunday service since the deadly fires last week, parishioners of the Kupaianaha church pray for healing after the tragedy, in Wailuku on Aug. 13.
David Butow for TIME
Ruins of a home in Kula on Aug. 12.
David Butow for TIME
A woman, who asked not to be named, hoses down a still-hot part of the property of a friend whose house burned down in Kula on Aug. 12.
David Butow for TIME
Charred remnants of a home seen in Kula on Aug. 12.
David Butow for TIME
Parishioners of the Kupaianaha church pray during a service on Aug. 13.
David Butow for TIME
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