LONG BEACH, California — While Maui’s deadly wildfires may have faded from the headlines, the road to recovery remains front page news to those who lost everything. Safe housing is among the greatest needs on the island, and CBN’s Operation Blessing (OB) is helping to meet it.
OB trucks traveled five days and thousands of miles to make the coast-to-coast delivery. CBN News caught up with this caravan of hope as they arrived in Long Beach.
The trucks arrived at a shipping center ahead of schedule, delivering an answer to many prayers.
“I think this is probably the furthest undertaking of modular homes to ever happen. I am not aware of homes traveling 12 time zones, quite literally,” said Yan Pronin.
Pronin runs the company that built the pre-wired, pop-up homes in Hungary.
They arrived in New Jersey just a few days ago, where OB trucks picked them up for the next leg of the journey.
“What’s behind us is 90 more units that are traveling to Maui. We have the generous support of Operation Blessing and our partners from Vanguard Logistics,” Pronin told CBN News.
Each truck can carry as many as ten units. That’s ten homes. And once they arrive at their final destination, they can be assembled in as little as five to ten minutes, ready to be used.
This help is made possible by those supporting Operation Blessing.
ABOVE: An image showing what the interior of the homes will look like once they arrive and are assembled at the Family Life Center’s new Ohana Hope Village in Maui. Nearly 250 people will live in the village’s housing units. They’re among the thousands displaced by the Maui wildfires. (Screenshot credit: CBN News)
“Families coming out of trauma, they deserve privacy of bathrooms and kitchens,” said Dr. Ashley Kelly, COO of the Ohana Hope Village. “What we’ve been calling a temporary shelter with a home-like feel.”
Kelly traveled from Maui to Long Beach to see the homes arrive at the shipping center. She has been working nearly non-stop, since the disaster. To her, this is more than a job.
“In my youth, I spent some time on the streets. I was in a bad place in my life and was there by my own choice. But I saw what the streets were like. I saw people who were not there by their own choice. And these families, they don’t deserve that. I want them to have something that really feels like home,” Kelly told CBN News.
It’s also a personal passion behind Pronin’s work on this housing project. He grew up in Ukraine.
“I was a fire survivor myself. At a very young age, I was pulled out of a burning building with my mom. The building collapsed a couple of minutes after we were pulled out. And so, I lived all my life traumatized by the fire that spanned all generations. And so when we heard of the fire, I knew exactly what those families were going through,” he said.
When the shelters ship from Long Beach, the ships carrying them will also deliver more than just a home to people in need in Maui. They will deliver cards with messages of hope, given to the OB truck drivers along the journey in places like North Carolina and Oklahoma.
One of the cards written by a seven-year-old reads, “Hi, I hope God blesses you to find somewhere safe.”
To find out more about Operation Blessing, click here.
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