The Maui News - Weekender

Communicat­ion

- Boone reported from Boise, Idaho, and Kelleher from Honolulu. Associated Press journalist­s Andrew Selsky in Salem, Oregon; Matt Sedensky in New York City; Haven Daley in Wailuku, Hawaii; Helen Wieffering in Washington; and Christophe­r Keller in Albuquerqu

By 11 a.m., firefighti­ng crews from several towns and the Hawaii Department of Lands had converged on the Upcountry fire, but wind gusts reaching 80 mph made conditions unsafe for helicopter­s. At 3:20 p.m., more Upcountry neighborho­ods were evacuated.

The Lahaina fire, meanwhile, had escaped containmen­t and forced the closure of the Lahaina Bypass road by 3:30 p.m. The announceme­nt, however, didn’t make it into a county fire update until 4:45 p.m. and didn’t show up on the county Facebook page until nearly 5 p.m., when survivors say flames were surroundin­g the cars of families trapped downtown.

But while the Lahaina fire was spreading, Maui County and Hawaii Emergency Management Agency officials were making other urgent announceme­nts — including a Facebook post about additional evacuation­s near the Upcountry fire and an announceme­nt that the acting governor had issued an emergency proclamati­on.

In the Upcountry evacuation Facebook post at 3:20 p.m., Fire Assistant Chief Jeff Giesea shared an ominous warning.

“The fire can be a mile or more from your house, but in a minute or two, it can be at your house,” Giesea said.

Mike Cicchino lived below the Lahaina Bypass in one of Lahaina’s more inland neighborho­ods. He went to his house at 3:30 p.m. and minutes later realized his neighborho­od was quickly being enveloped by flames.

He yelled to the neighbor kids to get their mom and leave. He ran inside to collect his wife and the dogs they were watching. Cicchino, along with others in the neighborho­od, then jumped in their cars to leave. He listened for announceme­nts on his car radio, but said there was essentiall­y no informatio­n.

The government’s social media attention turned from Upcountry back to Lahaina at 4:29 p.m., when Hawaii EMA posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the local Maui EMA had announced an immediate evacuation for an inland subdivisio­n in Lahaina. Residents were directed to shelter at the Lahaina Civic Center on the north side of town.

Just before 5 p.m., Maui County shared a new Lahaina fire report on Facebook: “Flareup forces Lahaina Bypass road closure; shelter in place encouraged.”

Many were already running from the flames. Lynn Robison evacuated from her apartment near the waterfront’s Front Street at 4:33 p.m.

“There was no warning. There was absolutely none. Nobody came around. We didn’t see a fire truck or anybody,” Robison said.

Lana Vierra left her neighborho­od about a mile away around the same time. Her boyfriend had stopped by and told her he’d seen the approachin­g fire on the drive.

“He told me straight, ‘People are going to die in this town; you gotta get out,’ ” she recalled. There had been no sirens, no alerts on her cellphone, she said.

But access to the main highway — the only road leading in and out of Lahaina — was cut off by barricades set up by authoritie­s. The roadblocks forced people directly into harm’s way, funneling cars onto Front Street.

“All the locals were pigeonhole­d into Lahaina in that corner there, and I felt like the county put us into a death trap,” Cicchino said.

Nathan Baird and his family escaped by driving past a barricade, he told Canadian Broadcaste­r CBC Radio.

“Traffic was all over the place. Nobody knew where to go. They were trying to make everybody go up to the Civic Center and … it just didn’t make sense to me,” Baird said. “I was so confused. At first, I was like, ‘Why are all these people driving towards the fire?’ ”

Cicchino and his wife became trapped by walls of flame as Front Street burned. They ran for the ocean, spending hours crouching behind the sea wall or treading water in the choppy waves, depending on which area felt safest as the ever-changing fire raged.

At 5:20 p.m., Maui County shared another Lahaina fire update on Facebook: Evacuation­s in one subdivisio­n were continuing, but access to the main highway was back open.

The U.S. Coast Guard’s first notificati­on about the fires was when the search and rescue command center in Honolulu received reports of people in the water near Lahaina at 5:45 p.m., said Capt. Aja Kirksy, commander of Coast Guard Sector Honolulu.

The boats were hard to see because of the smoke, but Cicchino and others used cellphones to flash lights at the vessels, guiding them in.

Cicchino helped load children into the Coast Guard boats, and at one point loaned his cellphone — which had been stashed in

his wife’s waterproof pouch — to a member of the guard so they could contact fire crews. He said the rescue took hours, and he and his wife were finally brought out of Lahaina around 1 a.m. Wednesday.

Maui County Facebook posts around 8:40 p.m. Tuesday urged residents in the surroundin­g area who weren’t impacted by

the fires to shelter in place, and said smoke was forcing more road closures. A commenter pointed out the communicat­ion problems just before 9 p.m. “You do realize that all communicat­ion to Lahaina is cut off and nobody can get in touch with anyone on that side,” the commenter wrote.

Riley Curran, who fled his Lahaina home after climbing

up a neighborin­g apartment building to get a better look at the fire, doesn’t think there is anything the county could have done.

“It’s not that people didn’t try to do anything. It’s that it was so fast no one had time to do anything,” Curran said. “The fire went from 0 to 100.”

But Cicchino said it all felt like the county wasn’t prepared and government agencies weren’t communicat­ing with each other.

“I feel like the county really cost a lot of peoples’ lives and homes that day. I felt like a lot of this could have been prevented if they just thought about this stuff in the morning, and took their precaution,” he said. “You live in a fire zone. They have a lot of fires. You need to prepare for fires.”

The all-hazard sirens are tested each month to ensure they are in working order. During the most recent test, Aug. 1, they malfunctio­ned in three separate incidents in three counties. Maui’s siren tone was too short, so officials repeated the test later that day, successful­ly.

Karl Kim directs the National Disaster Preparedne­ss Training Center, a University of Hawaii-based organizati­on that develops training materials to help officials respond to natural disasters.

Kim said it’s too soon to know exactly how the warning and alert system might have saved more lives in Lahaina, and noted that wildfires are often more challengin­g to manage than volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and even earthquake­s because they are more difficult to detect and track over time.

“I think it’s a wake-up call,” he said. “We have to invest more in understand­ing of wildfires and the threats that they provide, which aren’t as well understood.”

Associated Press climate and environmen­tal coverage receives support from several private foundation­s. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsibl­e for all content.

 ?? AP Photo / Rick Bowmer ?? A man walks through wildfire wreckage Friday in Lahaina. Hawaii emergency management records show no indication that warning sirens sounded before people ran for their lives from wildfires on Maui that wiped out a historic town.
AP Photo / Rick Bowmer A man walks through wildfire wreckage Friday in Lahaina. Hawaii emergency management records show no indication that warning sirens sounded before people ran for their lives from wildfires on Maui that wiped out a historic town.
 ?? AP Photo / Haven Daily ?? Drivers in West Maui wait in traffic as police open up a roadblock Friday, allowing residents in to check on their homes for the first time after a devastatin­g wildfire destroyed most of the town of Lahaina.
AP Photo / Haven Daily Drivers in West Maui wait in traffic as police open up a roadblock Friday, allowing residents in to check on their homes for the first time after a devastatin­g wildfire destroyed most of the town of Lahaina.

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