LATONIA, Ky. — The deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century has completely devastated Lahaina, Hawaii.
A Kentucky restaurant owner from Hawaii, who still has family in Maui, wasn’t sure what to do as he watched the tragic event unfold. But he realized he needed to help in some way.
Valentino Abafo started Kealoah’s Kitchen in 2020 as a food truck. He then moved into a takeout restaurant in Latonia. There he gets to serve Kentuckians the traditional Hawaiian dishes he grew up eating. He said he learned to cook during his 20-year career in the Air Force.
“I learned how to cook from all my friends and my friends’ wives from around the world,” Abafo said.
Abafo grew up in Hawaii, but hasn’t been back to the islands in 10 years. He’d been planning a trip later this month with his wife and four children. Now he’ll spend a good portion of that trip calling friends and family who live there to see how he can help.
“My older brother lives on Maui, up in Kula, which is up by the volcano,” Abafo said. “He’s fine. A lot of his friends that he knows lost everything. It was just crazy how that fire went with the hurricane 200 miles south of the Hawaiian Islands.”
At least 99 people have been confirmed dead from the wildfire, which wiped out the historic town of Lahaina in western Maui, and left thousands of people without homes. The death toll is expected to rise in the coming days as the wreckage is searched.
“It just breaks my heart seeing these people. It just gives me a sick feeling in my stomach, knowing that people just were running for their lives, actually, jumping into water just to survive, jumping out of their cars. It’s just tragic like any other war zone,” Abafo said. “I was just lost. I mean I was in shock at first. Just trying to figure out what we can do. I didn’t know what I was going to do. But when my poi came in, I was like, ‘Wow, maybe we’ll just raffle off the poi for five bucks a ticket, and see what we can come up with.”’
Poi is a Hawaiian staple food made from taro root. Abafo raffled off two pounds of it last Friday.
“And we raised $1,860.62. So that’s gonna be sent to Maui Strong. It’s our customers. I mean my customer base here in Kentucky. I throw something up on Facebook, and they’re there for me,” he said. “A lot of my customers don’t eat poi. They’re like, just put me in the raffle, you know. I don’t need a ticket. It just warms your heart to see people come out.”
That money is a drop in the bucket compared to what will be needed in the coming years to help people in Maui. For someone who’s been serving others his whole life, this is just the start.
“Hopefully, we’ll get enough to help the people out over there,” Abafo said. “There’s so much history there that hopefully they’ll be able to rebuild. And you know, they’re resilient people. Hawaiians are resilient. So they’ll be able to recover.”
People who want to help can visit the Maui Strong website.