Maui wildfires destroy towns, kill at least 6
Officials warn tourists to stay away as many places are `wiped out'
A wildfire tore through the heart of the Hawaiian island of Maui in total darkness Wednesday, reducing much of a historic town to ash and forcing people to jump into the ocean to flee the flames. At least six people died and dozens were wounded.
Acting Gov. Sylvia Luke said the flames “wiped out communities,” and urged travelers to stay away.
“This is not a safe place to be,” she said.
The wind-driven conflagration swept into coastal Lahaina with alarming speed and ferocity, blazing through intersections and leaping across wooden buildings in the town center that dates to the 1700s and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Aerial video revealed entire blocks of homes and businesses flattened, including on Front Street, a popular shopping and dining area. Other images portray a scene of near-complete devastation. Smoking heaps of rubble lay piled high next to the waterfront and gray smoke hovered over the leafless skeletons of scorched trees.
“It was apocalyptic from what they explained,” Tiare Lawrence said of 14 cousins and uncles who fled as the inferno descended on the family's hometown. “The heat. Smoke and flames everywhere. They had to get my elderly uncle out of the home.”
The relatives took refuge in Lawrence's house in Pukalani, east of Lahaina. She was also frantically trying to reach her siblings Wednesday morning, but there was no phone service.
Lahaina resident Keʻeaumoku Kapu was tying down loose objects in the wind at the cultural center he runs in Lahaina when his wife showed up Tuesday afternoon and told him they needed to evacuate. “Right at that time, things got crazy, the wind started picking up,” said Kapu, who added that they got out “in the nick of time.”
Two blocks away they saw fire and billowing smoke. Kapu, his wife and a friend jumped into his pickup truck. “By the time we turned around, our building was on fire,” he said. “It was that quick.”
Crews on Maui were battling multiple blazes concentrated in two areas: the