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.
‘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 Oahu, 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.
