Deadly disasters are ravaging school communities in growing numbers. Is there hope ahead?

  • by:
  • Source: USA Today
  • 09/26/2023
After one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history, Philip Raya, his wife and two young children drove through the wreckage of Lahaina – looking at bodies and the ashes of the town they once called home – enroute to a new start on the other side of Maui.

There were many devastating sights. Their longtime neighborhood school, King Kamehameha III Elementary, had burned down. The green-painted oceanfront campus lived next to the community's treasured Banyan Tree.

For the family kids, Isabella, 8, and Niko, 6, the destruction is incomprehensible.

"We get questions from our kids: When are we going go back to our old school? And when are we going to go back to our own house? We don’t really have the answers," Raya said. "These are uncharted waters for us."

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burning building at nighttime by Michael Held is licensed under Unsplash unsplash.com

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