EXCLUSIVE: Paris Hilton spotted enjoying the sun with family on Hawaii beach just 30 miles from deadly Laharia fire – even after Jason Momoa told tourists to say away
- Paris Hilton was pictured on Saturday enjoying her family vacation on Maui at a resort in Wailea, only 30 miles from the devastated town of Lahaina
- The businesswoman and socialite arrived with her husband and their seven-month-old son Phoenix on Tuesday – the day the fires broke out
- Since Wednesday the Hawaii Tourism Agency has been begging visitors to leave, and postpone future travel to the island, as the locals need all resources
Paris Hilton was pictured on Saturday smiling on the beach in Maui with her husband and son – despite Hawaii tourism officials begging visitors to leave to free up hotel rooms for homeless residents and allow island officials to focus on wildfire recovery.
Hilton was pictured at a resort in Wailea, only 30 miles from the devastated town of Lahaina, as the death toll rose to 93, making the disaster the worst wildfire in the United States in 100 years.
A smaller fire, in south Maui’s Kihei area, was still burning on Sunday, only five miles from her vacation spot.
The 42-year-old heiress and businesswoman arrived on the island on Tuesday – the day the wildfires ravaged the historic town of Lahaina and burnt it to the ground.
On Wednesday, the Hawaii Tourism Authority asked tourists to leave.
Paris Hilton and her husband Carter Reum are pictured on Saturday enjoying the beach in Wailea, Maui
The couple, both 42, brought their seven-month-old son Phoenix with them
‘Visitors who are on non-essential travel are being asked to leave Maui, and non-essential travel to Maui is strongly discouraged at this time,’ the agency wrote.
‘In the days and weeks ahead, our collective resources and attention must be focused on the recovery of residents and communities that were forced to evacuate their homes and businesses.’
On Friday, they reiterated their plea, beseeching those who remained to fly home and give the islanders space.
Anyone planning on coming, they said, should postpone their travel or go to another island in Hawaii.
‘For those coming to Hawaii over the next weeks or perhaps even months, depending on what we learn as the situation unfolds, a safer alternative is to plan travel to Kauai and Oahu,’ they said.
Jason Momoa, who was born in Honolulu, on the island of Maui, on Saturday urged tourists to leave.
‘Maui is not the place to have your vacation right now,’ he wrote on Instagram.
‘Do not travel. Do not convince yourself that your presence is needed on an island that is suffering this deeply.’
The 44-year-old also shared a video in which he said that the Hawaiian community ‘needs time to heal, grieve and restore’.
‘That means the less visitors on the island taking up critical resources that have become extremely limited the better,’ he said.
Hilton and Reum, who married in 2021, arrived on the island on Tuesday – the day the fires broke out
The heiress has been visiting Hawaii for decades, and said at the end of July she was excited about her next trip
Hilton said that she was excited about Phoenix being able to play on the island with his cousins
The little boy was born via surrogate in January: Hilton has been open about wanting to have more children, also via surrogate
Reum, a venture capitalist, also has a daughter with former actress Laura Bellizzi
Hilton and Reum are seen on Saturday strolling near the beach
Hilton’s relatives were not with the couple, but she said in July she would be visiting with her sister Nicky
Hilton met Reum in their 20s but reconnected at a family friend’s Thanksgiving gathering in 2019: they married two years later in a lavish Bel-Air ceremony
Hilton and Reum first met when the heiress was in her 20s, but they did not begin dating until 2019
Josh Green, the governor of Hawaii, said 500 hotels rooms will be made available for locals who have been displaced.
An additional 500 hotel rooms will be set aside for workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Some hotels will carry on with normal business to help preserve jobs and sustain the local economy, Green said.
On Friday, Green asked residents with space to open their doors and take in Maui residents who have lost their homes.
The state wants to work with Airbnb to make sure that rental homes can be made available for locals, and Green hopes that the company will be able to provide three- to nine-month rentals for those who have lost homes.
At least 2,200 buildings were damaged or destroyed in West Maui, Green said, nearly all of them residential.
Across the island, damage was estimated at close to $6 billion.
The historic town of Lahaina, which is in Maui County, has suffered black after block of complete devastation from the wildfires; an aerial view shows charred cars demolished buildings on Friday
The death toll has risen to 93, with more bodies expected to be found
Momoa’s shared the video that captures the state of Maui right now
Block after block of buildings in the Maui town, which had a resident population of over 12,700 in the 2020 census, has been completely demolished, according to NBC News.
Residents of Maui have described their disgust at the sight of tourists swimming at the beach, while residents were still counting the dead.
‘The same waters that our people just died in three days ago are the same waters the very next day these visitors – tourists – were swimming in,’ one local told the BBC.
‘That says a lot about where their heart and mind is through all of this, and where our heart and mind is now.’
She said no Hawaiian would be ‘swimming, snorkeling, surfing’ in such tragic circumstances.
‘Nobody is having fun in tragedy and continuing their lives as if nothing happened.
‘There is two Hawaiis now. The Hawaii we’re living in and the Hawaii they’re living in.’
Hilton is a regular visitor to Hawaii, and has been photographed there multiple times for decades.
On July 23, she told People magazine that she was planning another trip – the first with her son Phoenix, who was born via surrogate in January.
‘I just can’t wait for Hawaii, because I can’t wait to have him be with all of his cousins,’ she said.
‘My sister and I have been staying at [a hotel] for so many years, and just going on all the water slides and just being kids, so it’ll be really a fun experience to now experience that with our own children.
‘So I just can’t wait for that trip, with all of the cousins together. That’s just going to be so special.’
A source close to Hilton told DailyMail.com: ‘She has been absolutely helping. Maui has always held a special place in her heart. She has been gathering supplies and taking them to shelters and those who need. She already did and continues to do so.’
As the death toll around Lahaina climbed to 93, authorities warned that the effort to find and identify the dead was still in its early stages.
The blaze is already the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century.
Burned houses and buildings are pictured on Saturday in the aftermath of the wildfire
Lahaina is seen from a boat, with the buildings burnt to the ground
An aerial photo taken on Friday shows the fires still smoldering in Lahaina
A Mercy Worldwide volunteer makes damage assessment of charred apartment complex in Lahaina on Saturday
Crews with cadaver dogs have covered just three percent of the search area, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said on Saturday.
‘We’ve got an area that we have to contain that is at least five square miles, and it is full of our loved ones,’ he said, noting that the number of dead is likely to grow and ‘none of us really know the size of it yet.’
He spoke as federal emergency workers picked through the ashen moonscape left by the fire that razed the centuries-old town of Lahaina.
Teams marked the ruins of homes with a bright orange ‘X’ to indicate an initial search, and ‘HR’ when they found human remains.
Elsewhere on Maui, at least two other fires have been burning: in south Maui’s Kihei area and in the mountainous, inland communities known as Upcountry. No fatalities have been reported from those blazes.
The Upcountry fire affected 544 structures, most of them homes, Green said.
As many as 4,500 people are in need of shelter, county officials said on Facebook, citing figures from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Pacific Disaster Center.
J.P. Mayoga, a cook at the Westin Maui in Kaanapali, has seen his job switch from feeding tourists to cooking for the roughly 200 hotel employees and their family members who have been living there since Tuesday’s fire devastated the Lahaina community just south of the resort.
His home and that of his father were spared.
But his wife, two young daughters, father and another local are all staying in a hotel room together, as it is safer than Lahaina, which is covered in toxic debris.
Maui water officials warned Lahaina and Kula residents not to drink running water, which may be contaminated even after boiling, and to only take short, lukewarm showers in well-ventilated rooms to avoid possible chemical vapor exposure.
‘Everybody has their story, and everybody lost something. So everybody can be there for each other, and they understand what’s going on in each other’s lives,’ he told AP of his co-workers at the hotel.
The latest death toll surpassed that of the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California, which left 85 dead and destroyed the town of Paradise.
The cause of the wildfires is under investigation.
A group of volunteers who sailed from Maalaea Bay, Maui, form an assembly line on Kaanapali Beach on Saturday
The group are seen forming a human chain to get the supplies onto land
People gather for a morning service at Keawalai Church, founded in 1832, in Makena on Sunday
The fires are Hawaii’s deadliest natural disaster in decades, surpassing a 1960 tsunami that killed 61 people.
An even deadlier tsunami in 1946 killed more than 150 on the Big Island.
Fueled by a dry summer and strong winds from a passing hurricane, the flames on Maui raced through parched brush covering the island.
The most serious blaze swept into Lahaina on Tuesday and destroyed nearly every building in the town of 13,000, leaving a grid of gray rubble wedged between the blue ocean and lush green slopes.
Maui’s firefighting efforts may have been hampered by limited staff and equipment.
Bobby Lee, president of the Hawaii Firefighters Association, said there are no more than 65 county firefighters working at any given time, who are responsible for three islands: Maui, Molokai and Lanai.
Lahaina resident Riley Curran said he doubted that county officials could have done more, given the speed of the flames.
He fled his Front Street home after seeing the oncoming fire from the roof of a neighboring building.
‘It’s not that people didn’t try to do anything,’ Curran said. ‘The fire went from zero to 100.’
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