By Kirstin Downey, reporter for Civil Beat.

“Normally thousands of visitors would be in the tourist mecca on any given day. But an organized effort by tourism officials helped get them out.”

An amazing account of the heroes behind the scenes that you haven’t heard about.

“Even as the fires in Lahaina were still burning, even before top state officials knew the magnitude of the disaster, a handful of tourism managers on Maui moved quickly to orchestrate an airlift of some 12,000 visitors off the island and out of harm’s way.”