Lahaina's fire-stricken Filipino residents are key to tourism and local culture. Will they stay?

abcnews.go.com:

Filipinos began arriving in Hawaii more than a century ago to work on sugarcane and pineapple plantations to support their families back home

LAHAINA, Hawaii — Ambulance and fire truck sirens wailed outside as Elsie Rosales stripped linens from king-sized mattresses at a beachfront resort in Lahaina.

She tried to focus on the work, but was beset by dread: Had a wildfire taken the home she scrimped to buy on a housekeeper’s wages?

It had. And now Rosales, like many other Filipino housekeepers used to cleaning hotels, is living in one with her family, a poignant example of how the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century has afflicted Maui’s heavily Filipino population.

“All our hard work burned,” Rosales told The Associated Press in an interview conducted in Ilocano, her native language. “There is nothing left.”

The disaster has prompted fears about what will become of Lahaina’s community and character as it rebuilds.

Many are concerned residents like Rosales won’t be able to afford to live in Lahaina after the community is rebuilt, and that affluent outsiders seeking a home in the oceanfront town will price them out.

Will Filipinos, Native Hawaiians and others who have been the backbone of the tourism industry for so long be able to remain here? Will they want to?

Filipinos began arriving in Hawaii more than a century ago to labor on sugarcane and pineapple plantations. As their descendants and successive generations of immigrants have settled, they have become deeply ingrained in the community’s culture.

Today, they account for the second-largest ethnic group on Maui, with nearly 48,000 island residents tracing their roots to the Philippines, 5,000 of them in Lahaina, which was about 40% of the town’s population