I'm a small business owner on Maui. We need tourists to keep coming to support the economy and it's super irresponsible to tell them to stay away.

20.08.2023 - 15:35 / insider.com / On Maui

This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with 41-year-old Javier Cantellops, who owns three businesses in Maui, Hawaii: Sting J Maui , Island Style Diving , and Maui Dreams Dive Co . His businesses are based in Kihei, where he also lives. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.

I've been on Maui for the last eight years. I'm actually a Puerto Rican kid, so I'm an island boy that's traveled the world. I moved out here to live as a professional dive instructor.

I have a mini dive empire here. This is my dream: to live in Maui and showcase the underwater world and share my passion.

Although you are only hearing about the Lahaina fire, because obviously it was devastating, the Kula fire also damaged homes and damaged a lot of property, and made its way half a mile from my house. My family were in our house packing, preparing. We got evacuation notices that I ignored because I was like, "I'm not leaving here until I know my home is safe." It was a very, very scary time for us.

My boat, the lifeline of my business, was three miles down the road. So I was driving back and forth from my boat and back to my home. My boat, because it's surrounded by grassland, I would spray all the grass down, and I sprayed my boat down. Then I'd come home, keep up with my wife, and that's what I did for two days basically.

All the dive companies in Lahaina, the dive shop owners, they're all my close friends. Right after the fires, nobody knew anything. So I went out there and flew my drone and then gave away all the footage, so that the whole world could see what was going on. I continued doing supply runs and bringing people in and out of Lahaina as well.

Then all of a sudden people started being super irresponsible and saying, "Maui's closed, don't come to Maui, we need to grieve." That's not how life works. If there's an earthquake in San Francisco, Los Angeles doesn't shut down.

The news media and people out there make it sound like Maui burned down. Maui did not burn down. A town in Maui burned down. And yes, it was very culturally impactful and full of history. There are now tens of thousands of residents not directly impacted by the fires in a physical way, that are getting massively financially impacted by the fires.

A lot of tourists and visitors have left. Some have straight up canceled trips for October and November and late September. In three days, I refunded $45,000. [Editor's note: Insider viewed documentation that showed more than $45,000 in refunds.]

I know three full businesses in the dive industry that have completely stopped, have furloughed their employees, and put them all on unemployment. And this has happened in two, three days. Unlike COVID where it was kind of this long