HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Every year, more people leave Hawaii than move here, and young adults make up nearly 25% of those departures.

The Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii’s Young Professionals (YP) Program is hosting a summit to discuss solutions to the brain drain.

Organizers Jessica Yuhara and Alena Kangas Auyoung joined HNN’s Sunrise to talk about efforts to retain top young talent in Hawaii and its Cost of Living Summit on October 25 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Alohilani Resort in Waikiki.

Among the factors prompting the outmigration of young adults are the high cost of living and lack of civic engagement in Hawaii. According to UHERO and DBEDT, young adults ages 25 to 34 represent 13.8% of Hawaii’s population, yet account for 24.3% of departures.

More than 150 young professionals, community leaders and policymakers will discuss solutions at the summit, which aims to empower young professionals with tools and knowledge so they can turn the tide.

“This is a summit of and for our generation. We have to be the solution. Our families invested in their children not to bring those gifts to bear elsewhere. The summit will empower young professionals with the tools and knowledge needed to actively engage in their communities and make their voices heard on the issues that matter most,” organizers said.

A UHERO report shows only 1 in 5 local households can afford a mortgage for an $875,000 median priced home, while Child Care Aware of America says child care in Hawaii costs 18 percent of the median income for a married couple.

Tickets for the Cost of Living Summit, presented by Tradewind Group. are $50 for members and $65 for the general public. For more information, visit tinyurl.com/YPCostofLiving.

The YP Program aims to create a movement and change by building a stronger coalition to solve some of the state’s biggest challenges.

To join, visit cochawaii.org. Membership rates start at $50.

Here are some event highlights:

1. “Surviving in Today’s Hawaii” Pre-Summit, Presented by American Savings Bank

• Focus on financial literacy with sessions on growing and investing money, starting a side hustle, buying a home, preparing for college, taxes and more.

2. Cost of Living Summit presented by Tradewind Group

• Cost of Housing Panel: Address housing affordability and discussion of potential solutions
• Workforce Retention & Cost of Childcare Panel: Explore the impact of childcare costs on workforce retention
• Interactive Breakouts: In-depth sessions and solutions-driven discussions on workforce retention, childcare costs and affordable housing.
• Lunch & Learn: Enjoy lunch with notable change makers including Housing Committee Chairs Senator Stanley Chang, Representative Luke Evslin and others.

Cost of Living Summit registration includes attendance to all sessions including a Pau Hana Networking event.

Copyright 2024 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.

The two finalists to become the next president of the 10-campus University of Hawaii system are scheduled to meet with community members across the state later this month and early October, when public input will play a role in determining who the UH Board of Regents selects.

The board has narrowed the search to succeed current President David Lassner to:

• Wendy F. Hensel, executive vice chancellor and university provost for The City University of New York.

• Julian Vasquez Heilig, provost and vice president of academic affairs for Western Michigan University.

UH said Hensel “oversees every aspect of the student and faculty experience across the 25 campus system.”

Previously, Hensel was the dean of the College of Law and provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at Georgia State University and graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School. She earned a bachelor’s degree “with highest honors” from Michigan State University, where she was a Harry S. Truman Scholar ​​and an intern at the U.S. Supreme Court, UH said.

Vasquez Heilig previously was the dean of the college of education at the University of Kentucky. Vasquez Heilig has doctorate and master’s degrees from Stanford University and degrees from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor.

They were picked from 93 applicants and are scheduled to appear at community forums and before groups of campus leaders, faculty, staff and student leaders, including the Puko’a Council, a group of UH Native Hawaiian leaders, according to UH.

“There was a tremendous amount of interest shown in the president’s position, and now we have two excellent candidates,” Board of Regents Chair Gabe Lee said in a statement. “We are asking all members of the UH ohana and other stakeholders, along with the general public, to participate in the public events and provide feedback on our finalists. That input will be critical as the regents deliberate and select the next UH President.”

Neal Milner — former chair of the political science department at UH Manoa and UH’s ombudsman, who also ran a program on conflict resolution, said the candidates will have to walk a line between listening and talking about their experience, particularly to often-skeptical faculty who will want to hear about their teaching backgrounds.

They also will face the challenge of coming from out of state and not from Hawaii or from within the UH system.

“The first trap is, are you snotty?” Milner said. “Are you holding up your nose and telling people how it was done someplace else?”

He called Lassner a good and generally successful leader during Lassner’s 14 years as UH president. Lassner is scheduled to retire at the end of the year.

But UH has had some clunkers among its 14 presidents before Lassner, especially Evan Dobelle, Milner said.

Milner called Dobelle, in particular, “a con man … who suckered the board of regents.”

The regents conducted “a secret search” before picking Dobelle and didn’t conduct basic research into Dobelle’s troubled background of controversy.

In 2004, UH regents voted unanimously to fire him following accusations of lavish spending, dishonesty and wasting university resources.

He infamously drove around the Manoa campus in his Porsche rather than a state car and bought a home for more than a $1 million while living rent-free in the president’s mansion, College Hill.

The regents’ decision to fire Dobelle “for cause” while he was on the mainland enabled UH to avoid paying around $2 million for the last four years of his contract, plus benefits.

Dobelle went on to become president at Westfield State University where he also was fired after criticism that he charged personal expenses on school credit cards and went on lavish foreign trips.

Milner said it’s good that the two finalists to become UH’s next president come from public university systems and not private, elite schools.

“They didn’t just get off the turnip truck, so they get it,” he said.

Milner called UH’s flagship Manoa campus, in particular, “an urban commuter school with an international flair that doesn’t get celebrated enough” that “does good research and has raised a tremendous amount of money.”

The candidates will have to “learn how to learn and thrive and accept what this place is like but there is a culture of resistance that exists at the university,” Milner said. “The university is resistant to change.”

At the same time, he said, “all presidents have to be strong advocates both for the university and the importance of knowledge.”

Simultaneously, Milner said, the next president has to be responsible for fundraising and “understand when you have to be tough with faculty” while also earning “the respect of faculty members.”

HONOLULU — The wind pushed flames from house to house as a group of neighbors tried to escape their blazing subdivision, abandoning their cars in a blocked road and running to an industrial outbuilding for safety. All six perished just blocks from their homes.

The group, including an 11-year-old and his parents, was among the victims whose desperate attempts to escape the Lahaina wildfire were detailed for the first time in a report released Friday. The investigation by the Fire Safety Research Institute for the Hawaii attorney general’s office delved into the conditions that fed the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century and the attempts to stop its spread and evacuate the town’s residents.

It found “no evidence” of Hawaii officials making preparations for the wildfire, despite days of warnings that critical fire weather was coming, and that the lack of planning hindered efforts to evacuate Lahaina before it burned.

At least 102 people died in the Aug. 8, 2023, wildfire that was fueled by bone-dry conditions and strong winds from a hurricane passing to Maui’s south.

Joseph Lara, 86, was found outside his purple 2003 Ford Ranger pickup truck at the parking structure of an outlet mall and “could have been trying to go north on Front Street before he was stuck in traffic,” according to the report.

His daughter told The Associated Press on Friday that she tries not to think about how he might still be alive if he had taken a different turn to escape.

“He was alone. He didn’t have anyone to tell him he should go here, here, here,” Misty Lara said. “I can’t fathom what his final thoughts were.”

The report is a reminder of the trauma experienced by the roughly 17,000 people who survived by driving through fire and blinding smoke, outrunning the flames on foot or bike or huddling in the ocean behind a seawall for hours as propane tanks and car batteries exploded around them.

“I grew up in Lahaina and like many in that community, I lost family on Aug. 8,” said Deputy Attorney General Ciara Kahahane. “Through my involvement in this investigation, I tried to humbly serve as a voice for you, the people of Lahaina.”

More than 60% of the victims tried to flee, with many discovered inside or outside their cars or huddled against the seawall. Nearly 80% of the fatalities were in the central part of Lahaina, where the fire flared and spread quickly in the afternoon, allowing little time to evacuate.

Many were stuck in traffic jams created by downed power poles, accidents, traffic signals that weren’t working and poor visibility. Some back roads that could have provided an alternative escape were blocked by locked gates.

For those who were evacuating, the distance between their home and the locations where they were recovered was on average 800 feet (244 meters), according to the report.

One couple was found in their car after turning onto a dead-end street in the chaos, with the flames behind them boxing them in. A man found huddled in the entranceway of a house had abandoned his car, presumably to seek refuge from the heat and smoke. Others took refuge alone in fast food restaurants or furniture stores.

Lahaina’s already-deteriorating infrastructure complicated evacuation efforts, the report found. Extended-family living arrangements meant households had multiple vehicles, parked on crowded, narrow streets, which created bottlenecks during the evacuations and blocked fire hydrants.

One road, Kuhua Street, tallied the most fatalities: More than two dozen victims were found on or near the narrow stretch of road that was the only path to safety for many in the densely populated neighborhood.

It was the same street where the report noted a firetruck was overtaken by flames and a company of firefighters nearly lost their lives. And it was the same street where a car accident trapped 10 people whose bodies were found in or around cars.

Joseph Schilling, 67, was found next to a fence on Kuhua Street, less than half a mile (800 meters) from the retirement complex where he lived. Emergency dispatchers had already tried to help multiple people who called 911 to report that the road was becoming impassable.

Six other residents of the independent-living complex who didn’t evacuate died inside their apartments. Their average age was 86.

Some older people did try to evacuate, even without reliable transportation.

Claudette Heermance, 68, called 911 to ask what to do and dispatchers told her to evacuate. She left her senior housing complex on a motorized scooter, but it ran out of power as the flames advanced, according to an autopsy report released after her death.

Badly burned, she stayed in hospice for seven months until she died in March.

She was the 102nd — and final — victim to be identified.