Several major companies have been ramping up efforts to support those who have lost everything in the harrowing wildfires that overtook West Maui.

The wildfires that decimated parts of the island are already considered the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century with over 100 fatalities as of Friday. Crews are working around the clock to contain some of the fires. 

Others are combing through neighborhoods to find those unaccounted for. The death toll is expected to rise. In the meantime, communities on the island are working together to gather supplies and lend support. 

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Major companies like Uber, Airbnb.org and Hormel Foods, are doing their part to help. 

Uber announced it is providing free rides to the shelter at the Hawaii Convention Center for evacuees and volunteers. 

“Our priority is to ensure that transportation is not a barrier,” the company said. 

The company is also donating $500,000 to the HawaiI Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund. 

It’s also launching a button in the app that will allow Uber and Uber Eats customers in the U.S. to make donations to the nonprofit. Uber will match the first $500,000 raised, bumping its commitment to $1 million.

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The ride-share giant is also providing financial support to drivers in Lahaina. The company said it is also exploring other “opportunities to help Uber drivers and couriers as Maui moves towards a recovery.” 

The Hormel Foods Corporation, the makers of Spam, is in the process of donating five truckloads of Spam products to help support recovery efforts in Maui. 

Three trucks are already on their way with two more to follow. In total, the trucks are carrying over 260,000 cans. 

The company said it is working with the nonprofit Convoy of Hope, which will ensure the product gets in the hands of those who need it most. 

It’s Spam brand has donated more than a $1 million in product and cash to directly help those impacted by the wildfires. Part of its efforts included designing and selling a “Spam Brand Loves Maui” T-shirt with 100% of the proceeds going to Aloha United Way’s Maui Fire Relief Fund for relief efforts in the area.

Airbnb.org pledged to provide free temporary stays for at least 1,000 people displaced by the deadly wildfires in Maui.

The independent nonprofit, which facilitates temporary stays for people in times of crisis, said it’s working with Hawaii Gov. Josh Green and several nonprofit organizations to connect people with temporary housing.

Airbnb staff volunteers, government entities and nonprofit groups such as the Maui Economic Opportunity and Global Empowerment Mission will review the eligibility of potential guests and help facilitate their stays, according to Airbnb.org. 

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To help, anyone with a home or room in Hawaii can sign up with Airbnb.org to help people who have been displaced. 

Anyone can donate to Airbnb.org to help fund emergency stays. All the donations will go toward covering the cost of housing for the survivors of the wildfires, the organization said.

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Two lawsuits accusing Michael Jackson of sex abuse that were previously dismissed have been revived by a California court of appeals.

On Friday, a three-judge panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled that Wade Robson and James Safechuck’s lawsuits can go to trial. 

Both men, who also repeated their allegations in the 2019 HBO documentary “Finding Neverland,” claim that the late “Billie Jean” singer repeatedly abused them when they worked with him as boys. Jackson died in 2009 at age 50.

The panel found that Robson and Safechuck’s lawsuits against Michael Jackson-owned corporations MJJ Productions Inc. and MJJ Ventures Inc. should not have been dismissed by a lower court judge in 2021. The suits had also been dismissed in 2017, for being beyond the statute of limitations. A new California law that temporarily broadened the scope of sexual abuse cases enabled the appeals court to restore them.

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The judge ruled at the time that boys working for the two entities could not expect the same protections as required by the Boy Scouts or a church. 

On Friday, the panel ruled, “a corporation that facilitates the sexual abuse of children by one of its employees is not excused from an affirmative duty to protect those children merely because it is solely owned by the perpetrator of the abuse.”

They added that “it would be perverse to find no duty based on the corporate defendant having only one shareholder. And so we reverse the judgments entered for the corporations.”

Robson, 40, who first met Jackson when he was 5 years old and appeared in three of his music videos, claimed that the popstar abused him over a period of seven years. 

Safechuck, 45, said he met Jackson while filming a commercial when he was 9 and the singer began called him repeatedly and gave him gifts before he started abusing him. 

Their lawsuits were first brought in 2013 and 2014, years after Jackson had died in June 2009.

Jonathan Steinsapir, attorney for the Jackson estate who argued for the defense in the case last month, said it didn’t make sense to require employees to stop their boss from abuse. 

“It would require low-level employees to confront their supervisor and call them pedophiles,” he argued, but Holly Boyer, an attorney for Robson and Safechuck, countered that as boys they had been “left alone in this lion’s den by the defendant’s employees. An affirmative duty to protect and to warn is correct.”

Steinsapir also claimed the defense has evidence that hasn’t reached trial that the boys’ parents were “not looking to Michael Jackson’s companies for protection from Michael Jackson.” 

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Steinsapir told Fox Business in a statement, “We are disappointed with the Court’s decision. Two distinguished trial judges repeatedly dismissed these cases on numerous occasions over the last decade because the law required it. We remain fully confident that Michael is innocent of these allegations, which are contrary to all credible evidence and independent corroboration, and which were only first made years after Michael’s death by men motivated solely by money. We trust that the truth will ultimately prevail with Michael’s vindication yet again. Michael Jackson himself said, ‘lies run sprints, but the truth runs marathons.’” 

Vince Finaldi, who represents Robson and Safechuck, called the previous dismissals “incorrect ruling,” telling The Associated Press that they were “pleased but not surprised” by the reversal. 

He added that the dismissals “would have set a dangerous precedent that endangered children throughout state and country. We eagerly look forward to a trial on the merits.” 

In a concurring opinion issued with Friday’s decision, one of the panelists, Associate Justice John Shepard Wiley Jr., wrote that “to treat Jackson’s wholly-owned instruments as different from Jackson himself is to be mesmerized by abstractions. This is not an alter ego case. This is a same ego case.”

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An upcoming trial in Los Angeles will rule on the validity of the allegations themselves. 

Jackson was acquitted of sex abuse charges in a separate trial involving a different accuser in 2005. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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