Church Stands While Historic Banyan Faces Uncertain Future After Lahaina Fire
For 177 years, Maria Lanakila Catholic Church has occupied the corner of Wainee and Dickenson streets in Lahaina. Its coral‑rock walls have witnessed monarchy, annexation, statehood and now the recent wildfire.
The building remained standing while the large banyan tree across the street, which covers nearly two‑thirds of an acre, suffered damage. Whether the tree will survive is still unknown. The church’s survival is not a miraculous Hollywood tale; it is a matter of construction. The structure is masonry, not timber, lacks overhanging eaves that could catch embers, and has a metal roof.
Fire races quickly through dry grass and wooden siding but slows when it meets stone. This contrast explains why much of Lahaina, whose older development predates modern fire codes and the expectation of a blaze that could travel from the mountains to the sea in a single afternoon, did not fare as well.
The banyan was planted in 1873 and has long served as a landmark, a source of shade, a backdrop for tourist photos and a play area for children. As a living organism, it is vulnerable to fire: heat can scorch its roots and dry its leaves. Its canopy may recover or it may not.
The community will watch, water and hope, but hope alone does not repair cambial tissue. The full extent of the injury remains unclear, and reports state plainly that there is no guarantee of recovery.
This pattern has emerged elsewhere: a fire arrives, some things endure, others fall. The church endures; the tree may not. The parish also maintains a second mission in Kapalua under the title of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, which remains intact and can serve as a base.
The Diocese of Honolulu will need to determine what rebuilding looks like. While the building itself is intact, a parish is fundamentally its people.
Many congregants have lost homes; some have lost everything. The church can still host Mass, but the congregation is scattered. The first Catholic priests arrived on Maui in 1846, erected a temporary church on this site, and later replaced it.
The present structure is not the original; it has been rebuilt before and will be rebuilt again in a sense, because a church without a community is merely a building. What truly matters now is the community, which the fire dispersed.
Wildfires on Maui are not unprecedented; dry summers, invasive grasses and strong winds are known contributors. What distinguishes this event is its extraordinary speed and scale. The flames moved so rapidly that residents had little chance to save the banyan tree or their dwellings.
The church survived because it was built to resist fire; the tree may not survive because it was never engineered, only grown. Its potential loss would be a significant blow, not an exaggeration but a recognition of its symbolic role as an anchor for the place.
When an anchor disappears, a community can drift. Lahaina has already experienced that drift; the fire altered everything. The church stands as a fixed point anchored by stone, while the tree is a fixed point anchored by roots. Both belong to the same narrative: stone endures, roots may not.
This highlights the difference between what is constructed and what is grown. The community will rebuild and recover, but recovery demands time, financial resources and deliberate decisions.
The fate of the banyan will be watched closely because it reflects the condition of the land. If the tree lives, the land may begin to heal; if it dies, the landscape is altered. Either way, the church remains, offering a place to gather, to pray and to start over.
