As Maui County lifted restrictions on the Lahaina Gateway shopping center this week, business remained slow at Maui’s largest open-air mall as residents continue to grapple with the aftermath of the deadly fire that burned down most of the town last month.

Though Hawaiian Electric has managed to restore power to the shopping center, the outdoor mall still relies on Lahaina’s water system, which remains damaged and contaminated after the fire.

“A lot of our friends here can’t open without water,” said Mark Noble, owner of the beach-gear rental and tour company Auntie Snorkel. Restaurants are unable to operate without fresh water and Noble said that even his own business is unable to clean rental equipment without clean water and can’t operate.

A resident of Olowalu, just south of Lahaina, Noble could see the orange glow of the flames that engulfed Lahaina on the night of Aug. 8. He and his wife have owned and operated Auntie Snorkel for 14 years at a location in Kihei and opened the new Lahaina location in April. On Wednesday, he and an employee were sorting through inventory.

“I’d always had a dream to come up here,” said Noble. “COVID scared me out of it. Then I decided to go for it, and the timing might not have been more brilliant.”

At Lahaina Gateway on Wednesday cars lined up in the parking lot to stop by an aid distribution site on the last day before it was set to move to a new site. But a handful of people stopped in to the only other open businesses — Ace Hardware, O’Reilly Auto Parts and Spectrum. Some larger corporate stores were able to continue operations with the support of generators when the power grid was out.

“We’ve been running off a generator for a couple of days,” said Martin Hussey, Ace’s Lahaina store manager. “We finally got our power on so we can work on our services.”

Hussey said there has been a small but steady stream of customers stopping by looking for generators, water, cleaning supplies and other goods.

“For the people that are still here and the people that are going home, they finally got their power, they want cleaning supplies,” he said. “That was one of the main things, cleaning supplies, trash bags. I’m trying to get back to some sort of normalcy.”

But Hussey said that for residents who still have not been able to get to where their homes are in areas relief officials have blocked off, “they’re not in that mindset because they need to get onto their property and see what needs to be done.”

The staff of Ace are themselves among those affected.

“Half my crew lost everything,” Hussey said. “The other half, you know, we’re lucky enough that the fire didn’t affect their homes. But everybody’s pretty much been displaced or inconvenienced in some way.”

Hussey’s house survived but he’s still without power or water.

Ron Moniz, a local resident who was shopping at Ace, said that his home survived the fire. But he said that because of his severe asthma, he still can’t return and is currently living with his daughter in her apartment. He said he can’t return home “until that house is totally basically rebuilt because of my breathing problem. That means all the carpet, everything needs to be replaced. You can’t just wash it.”

Hussey said that Ace also has been donating tools and supplies — everything from trash cans, hoses, coolers, rakes, shovels and tents — to the relief effort through nonprofit and government agencies.

“We’re just trying to, you know, work with whoever we can, grassroots and whatever, really,” he said.

On Wednesday, Maui County lunched MauiRecovers.org, which officials billed as “a comprehensive resource hub, offering a wide range of information and support services.” In a video announcing the launch, interim administrator of Maui Emergency Management Agency Darryl Oliveira said that the reopening of Lahaina to residents will be a phased process.

“Some of these phases do take time, but we are going to be moving in a forward direction and continue to try to bring closure for the community and allow people to return home,” Oliveira said. “It is our intent and goal to support residents and businesses returning, visiting their properties to collect any remaining personal effects, to bring in their insurance providers and carriers, to settle insurance claims and do their own personal damage assessment.”

Ray Miranda, district manager for O’Reilly Auto Parts, was training employees Wednesday in Lahaina. He said that when the store was running off a generator “we were at about three-quarter power and we were able to run transactions, look up parts, order parts, to fully function.”

“The people who do still have their vehicles, obviously still need to maintain them,” Miranda said. “We’re selling oil, we’re selling filters. I mean, we’re selling pretty much everything that we would normally sell on a regular business day, just at a slower pace now.”

Miranda said that the store is currently working on reduced hours but he is looking at gradually returning to full operations, but the pace is uncertain.

“We’ve talked to people in the community who have told us, ‘It’s not really necessary for you guys to be here all night, because there’s three-quarters of the communities wiped out,’” said Miranda. “So, you know, they’re, they’re being honest with us and we appreciate that. We know it’s a long road to recovery for everybody. So we’re gonna be here to do as much as we can do to help out our loyal customers.”

Noble said that he’s hoping to reopen his company’s West Maui operations Oct. 19.

“We’re hoping by Thanksgiving that we’ll be making it work,” he said.

He said that after the fire, the deadliest U.S. wildfire in over a century, businesses across the island took sharp hits and have suffered. But he said his Kihei location has seen gradually rebounding business over the past week as visitors return to other parts of the island, which has allowed him to keep paying rent on the Lahaina location.

“We saw a massive dip and now we are slowly seeing folks return and we’re doing much better than we were in the immediate aftermath,” he said. “We’re looking forward to a return of visitors to the west side.”

Noble said that while some people with prominent platforms have put out the message on social media for people not to visit Maui, he said that for small businesses that cater to tourists and people they employ, it will be critical to get visitors to come back.

“I’m gonna have my kids working here some day,” Noble said. “So we’ve got to make it.”