Six months after the Aug. 8 Lahaina wildfire, survivors today are likely to reach an emotional low that could last for months.

“It’s like a roller coaster of emotion right after a disaster — there’s shock, adrenaline, a coming together of the community,” said Colette Curtis, recovery and economic development director for the Town of Paradise, Calif., where the deadly Camp Fire in 2018 killed 85 people and all but wiped out the town.

The Paradise disaster happened five years before Lahaina would experience the deadliest wildfire in America in over a century — killing at least 100 people and leaving thousands homeless.

Lei Casco, 34, said Wednesday she “totally” agrees with the roller coaster analogy to describe her emotions over the past six months.

Her extended family lost five apartments and a single-family home in Lahaina. She relocated to a Kaanapali hotel with other survivors and now lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Napili with her husband and their three sons, ages 7, 9 and 11.

In front of her boys, Casco said she tries “to stay strong for our keiki. But when I’m by myself, I just break down and cry because of so much emotion, so much hurt, so much disappointment from the government. Do we live on the beach like so many others right now or just pick up and move somewhere else?”

The Lahaina fire destroyed more than 3,000 structures in the historic and picturesque town, most of them homes.

For the long term, Casco tries to focus on “one day at a time and one day being closer to getting back home to Lahaina.”

Having gone through it, many in Paradise can relate to what Casco and other Lahaina survivors are feeling.

“Generally there’s a lot of hope and action but then that adrenaline wears off and there’s a crash at the six-month mark,” Curtis said. “We definitely experienced that as a community.”

Gov. Josh Green plans to be on Maui today with Maui Mayor Richard Bissen and representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Small Business Administration.

While the attention will be on the past six months, Green told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Wednesday that he’s focused on the next six months, especially getting more survivors of the wildfires into long-term housing.

He wants more owners of Maui’s short-term vacation rentals to take advantage of the county’s moratorium on property taxes and above-market rental rates to convert their units into more permanent and stable housing for the 2,089 families — or 4,984 individuals — still living in hotels.

Green has threatened a moratorium on short-term rentals on Maui if he cannot get owners to convert by March 1 and, so far, 1,415 have, Green told the Star-­Advertiser.

Asked about the possibility of issuing a moratorium, Green said, “It looks unlikely we’ll need it.”

Still, another 500 owners of short-term rentals “need to step up,” he said.

“We need to help people heal and get them housing.” he said. “We’ve cut into the numbers (of survivors living in hotels) very significantly but there’s still a lot more work to be done.”

Overall the state needs 50,000 affordable homes and Green sees converting short-term rentals into long-term housing on Maui as a template for the rest of Hawaii.

Maui alone has an estimated 31,000 vacation rentals, meaning owners of nearly 30,000 units are not willing to voluntarily transition to long-term housing, thereby “greatly restricting our capacity,” Green said.

He pledged to sign any legislation designed to convert vacation rentals into long-term housing that’s constitutional.

Since the initial 7,796 fire evacuees moved out of shelters and into hotels, 4,984 of them remain in need of long-term housing, Green said.

“A lot of progress has been made,” he said. “I still hurt for anyone who hasn’t moved into housing.”

He expects that “more than a handful” of families who lost loved ones will accept an offer of $1.5 million through a special fund rather than go through protracted litigation that will likely cost them 40% of any settlement in attorney fees.

In January, an estimated 4,000 people marched 4.5 miles from Lahaina Bypass Road to Launiupoko Beach Park in a sign of unity toward resolving the housing problem.

“It was very positive,” Green said. “There was solidarity. Obviously there’s still a lot of pent up trauma.”

Six months after the Camp Fire all but wiped out Paradise, then-Mayor Jody Jones issued a message to residents that could apply today to survivors of the Maui wildfires:

“Today, May 8, 2019, it has been 6 months since the Camp Fire ignited and changed our lives forever,” Jones wrote. “Since that day, we have had to face challenges and heartbreak in ways we never thought possible. We have also made great strides as our community has come together to create a new vision for Paradise. We are removing the wreckage from our Town, knowing it is all that remains of once treasured possessions and memories. We are rebuilding, recognizing it will be a long time before things will feel normal again. But through it all, Paradisians have found our community to be the one thing the fire couldn’t touch. We will rebuild, we will move forward and create Paradise to be all the name implies.”

Just like on Maui today, survivors and business owners in Paradise remained in limbo and continued to struggle before hitting another wave of emotions six months later, on the one-year commemoration of the Camp Fire, Curtis said.

“That’s when people process and recover in many different ways,” she said. “Some people are fighting and nothing’s going to stop them … and then you have the people who honestly cannot come back for whatever reason.”

On Maui six months from now, Curtis said there will be “so much attention” focused on the one-year commemoration that will lead to another wave of emotions.

“For some people it’s healthy and healing, for others it’s triggering,” she said.

Tonight, Maui County plans to gather faith leaders “to offer prayers for comfort, peace and hope” to mark six months since the wildfires.

Media are barred from attending the 6 p.m. event at the Lahaina Civic Center Amphitheater “Out of respect for the occasion,” the county said in announcing the event.

“The gathering will offer a time for community members to honor lost loved ones and come together in prayer for comfort, healing and hope,” the county said. “Faith leaders from different Lahaina churches will offer prayers as part of the gathering.”

Officials in Paradise — just like on Maui — still have no idea how many residents moved away or how many plan, even five years after the Camp Fire, to return.

Anecdotally, however, some residents who moved to other California cities or out of state did eventually move back, Curtis said.

At six months — just like on Maui — thousands of fire survivors still had no permanent housing and businesses struggled, Curtis said.

Like Casco and her family, Curtis said “Most people (in Paradise) were still in limbo. They were just trying to get from day to day.”

In a follow-up email, Curtis wrote: “I hope the 6 month commemoration of the Maui fires is a healing time for the residents of Maui.”