The road to recovery for Lahaina runs along this highway

LAHAINA, Hawaii — His Hawaiian shirt lit red by taillights, Jowel Dolphin waited in the inky darkness for the road to Lahaina to reopen.

He’d arrived just after 4:30 a.m. Wednesday, his truck among the first at the checkpoint. Hundreds of cars waited in line by the time police began waving people through at 6 a.m., the first time this section of Honoapi’ilani Highway opened to the public since the most deadly U.S. wildfire in a century cut a wrathful path through his island paradise.

Over a week after the fire scorched the island and incinerated Lahaina, locals are beginning to return to work in West Maui — an area largely cut off from the rest of Maui