At least 53 people have died after the island of Maui was engulfed by intense wildfire flames that reduced entire neighborhoods to ashes, officials said — and the death toll is only expected to rise.
Officials are still surveying the extensive damage, but already expect the tragedy to become the state’s deadliest natural disaster since a 1961 tsunami killed 61 people on the Big Island.
The blazes decimated large swaths of the island, including more than 1,000 structures in the historic sector of Lahaina, where tourists had shopped and dined just days before.
Rubble and blackened foundations lie where popular destination spots and landmarks stood, and torched boats were found still smoldering in the harbor, according to Hawaii Gov. Josh Green.
“Lahaina, with a few rare exceptions, has been burned down,” Green said.
Neighborhood residents said the heat from the fires was so intense that survivors had to jump into the ocean to escape the flames burning their skin.
“We just had the worst disaster I’ve ever seen. All of Lahaina is burnt to a crisp. It’s like an apocalypse,” Mason Jarvi, as resident of Lahaina told Reuters.
Two residents who were in the heart of the city of Lahaina during the fires which killed at least 36 people described the chaos as a literal ‘hell’ with screams and explosions around them as flames closed in until they had nowhere else to go but the ocean.
“I saw a couple people just running, I heard screams out of hell … explosions. It felt like we were in hell, it really was,” one of the men, who asked not to be named, told KHON2. “It was just indescribable.”
Another survivor added: “You couldn’t really see anything, sometimes it was just blacked out by the smoke, but you could still see the flames.”
With their backs against the fire, the men said the winds from the heat were blowing the flames closer and closer to the residents taking shelter, burning their skin.
After about 30 minutes, the men said the heat became too much to bear, with police advising them over the phone to jump into the ocean.
KHON2
AP
With no other option, the men did just that, but even the cold water wasn’t enough to completely shield them from the sheer heat of the fires.
“I was like, after everything I’ve done, I don’t want to go out this way,” one of the men said about the hopeless situation they appeared to be in. “Hell or high water, we’re getting out.”
As they hung onto a nearby jetty, the US Coast Guard eventually arrived to save the men and dozens of others.
The Coast Guard said it helped rescue and relocate more than 50 people who ran and jumped into the ocean to escape the fires.
But while many were lucky to escape with their lives, they’ve come to learn Thursday that their homes and neighborhoods have been burnt to the ground, destroying their idyllic lives in the resort city.
“I own nothing. I have the clothes on my back and my car and that is it,” Phena Davis, a Lahaina resident of 20 years, told KITV 4.
Davis said a family member who was a firefighter warned them Tuesday evening the wildfires could not be contained and for them to pack everything they could and run to a relative’s home in Kahana.
“There was so much smoke, we had to evacuate. By 10 p.m., my house was burnt to the ground along with all of Front Street,” Davis said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.
“There is no Lahaina left. There’s no Lahaina Harbor, no Mala Wharf. Every restaurant is burned,” she added.