‘Smokey Dave’ travels from NC to cook more than 33,000 meals for Maui fire victims
On the longest day, David Lee Burch stood over a hot grill for 20 hours, turning out enough barbecue and brisket to feed 2,000 people, finishing long past the sunset over what used to be paradise.
Back home, they called him “Smokey Dave,” famous around his hometown of Roxboro for his brand of ‘cue cooked over pecan wood.
But in Maui, he wore the red T-shirt of a volunteer, serving free meals for 14 straight days, driving home past scorched palm trees and cadaver dogs with their noses to the rubble.
He worked alongside people whose houses had turned to ash but managed to keep their attention on their neighbors’ empty stomachs. And when the time came to fly home from that Hawaiian disaster area, after Burch helped cook 33,523 meals, he found new strength in empathy.
“There’s still hope in the world,” said Burch, 52. “These people lost everything, and they’re still giving. That’s something I don’t see much over here. That’s what I’ve decided my life is going to be like.”
Back in 2018, Burch joined with Operation BBQ Relief, a nonprofit that started in 2011 after a tornado destroyed more than 4,000 buildings and killed 158 people in Joplin, Mo.
Nothing compared to Maui
His first trip took him to Wilmington after Hurricane Florence, but Burch has delivered eastern-style barbecue to Louisiana in the wake of 100-mph winds and Kentucky while sunk waist-deep in floods.
But nothing compared to Maui in August, where wildfires killed 97 people and left another three dozen missing, turning the tourist town of Lahaina to a cinder. Arriving a week after the worst of the fire, Burch still saw helicopters dumping buckets of water where drought conditions sparked more flames.
Part of a team of 14, Burch stayed about five miles from Lahaina, partnered up with another volunteer from Tennessee, where they made the daily trek through the devastation.
“These guys would leave my house at 6:15 in the morning and they never got home until 9:30 at night,” said Steven Felton in Maui, who housed the volunteers. “They prepped, cooked and packaged 1,800 meals, and then they got in their car and drove 25 miles to the other side, to Sugar Beach, and made another 850 meals in one day. Every day. Every day.”
Part of the kitchen crew, Burch didn’t get much chance to interact with the victims and rescue workers he fed. He was too busy grilling. But on the way home at night, he would snap iPhone pictures of the gray wastelands below Maui’s peaks — a dead zone marked by burnt-out cars and missing person fliers.
“Just like 9/11,” he said. “I’ve seen fire damage. I’ve seen flood damage. Nothing like this. Cars all black, melted paint. It was a heart-wrenching thing.”
‘Maui Strong’ and a tattoo
It was easy to forget he was working in sight of beaches regularly listed among the most beautiful in the world.
Easy, but not impossible.
“I did see the ocean,” he said. “I did get in, too. One thing about Maui, there’s chickens everywhere. Wild chickens everywhere around. And the birds there will just land in the palm of your hand.”
Before he left, Burch took a break at a Maui tattoo shop, where he had a native sea turtle inked across his forearm, bearing an Operation BBQ Relief logo in its center. And he took home a “Maui Strong” hat, which he wears around home with a story to tell anyone who asks.
But at the end of August, when Burch hit Roxboro with the Hawaiian sun showing on his arms, he didn’t have much time for stories:
Hurricane Idalia struck Florida only one week later, leaving new people to feed and new hope to discover.
This story was originally published October 4, 2023 at 8:00 AM with the headline "‘Smokey Dave’ travels from NC to cook more than 33,000 meals for Maui fire victims."