At Maui’s Wailea Beach on Monday the skies were bright and clear. Luxury hotels lined the beachfront, their guests spread on the sand. Some waded in the ocean, while others sat under umbrellas with white monogrammed towels on their chairs.
Inside one of the hotels, beyond a pool, a two-tiered fountain and a glass-walled habitat for the resident parrot, was a wooden-framed screen advertising a relief fund for the resort’s employees – the first sign of the destruction in Lahaina, just 30 miles (48km) up the coast.
