The Way Back: “The Only Way Out Is to Go Back In”
Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino
A decade ago, Qiana and Michele Di Bari moved from New York to Lahaina, where, they say, they finally found a place that felt like home. But in August, after the couple and their 12-year-old daughter, Jada, fled the wildfires that tore through the town, and after chaos and confusion forced multiple evacuations a few days later, Jada broke down and said, “This doesn’t feel like home anymore.”
In the days that followed, Qiana’s mind mirrored the volatility of her surroundings. After she and Michele were allowed back into Lahaina, they saw that their house and three others had somehow been spared, but the rest of the neighborhood was destroyed. Their restaurants, Sale Pepe and Pacific’O, too, were gone.
That evening, I received a text from Qiana with a photo of her and Michele facing the ruins of Sale Pepe, the restaurant they built in a former KFC in Old Lahaina Center. Gone was the red-tiled pizza oven, gone was the window in front of which Michele’s mother used to set up and roll out dough for pasta on her winter sojourns from Italy.
