They had trouble walking and driving, but when fire roared through Lahaina, the tightknit residents of one complex were left to rely on one another — or no one.
Two weeks after a conflagration consumed Lahaina, Marjorie St. Clair is among the lucky - homeless, but alive.
Benny Caluya holds a stack of fliers seeking help finding his missing 98-year-old aunt, Louise Abihai. “State and local leaders and emergency officials must be better equipped and prepared to ensure that older adults are kept safe and their needs are met when a disaster strikes,” she said.In interviews, residents of Hale Mahaolu Eono and their relatives said the opposite happened in Lahaina. The government failed to improve wildfire prevention or warnings, they said, and staff left hours before the major fire began. Instead, as in much of Lahaina, neighbors relied on each other - or no one.
Staffers knocked on every resident’s door that morning to warn them that they might need to evacuate amid heavy winds, the company said in a separate statement. When the resident manager - whose job was to be on call during evenings and weekends - decided to evacuate at 11:30 a.m. that Tuesday, hours before the fire raged, he encouraged four residents to come, but they declined, the statement said.
Benny Caluya, left, and Clifford Abihai search for Louise Abihai at Hanakaoo Park in Lahaina, Hawaii. On a midday run for Pepsi and cigarettes, Sicard took a video of palm trees bowing in the heavy winds. They looked amusing, not alarming, she remembered thinking.But conditions soon turned ominous. Not long before 2 p.m., Bass, the complex’s gruff social butterfly, sent a text to a friend: “Smelled smoke.” She walked to the road and, seeing flames on the arid hills above Lahaina, hustled back to the complex and turned into a drill sergeant - or tried.
As Bass rushed toward her car, Schilling, still outside, told her he would be “right behind” her. Passing the opera singer’s open door, she told him to leave. “He says to me, ‘Tina, Tina, it’s okay, there’s no alarm in my house,’” Bass recalled. He remains missing. As they struggled down their front steps, two passing cars stopped, and a man carried Camilo into one while Juliana got into the other, said Fujii, who was stuck in traffic while returning from work in another town and whose own house was burning in Lahaina. The elderly couple was separated for the night and would not be located by family until the next day.
Sanford Hill, 72, paid $144 a month for Unit G4. He credits his survival to a dental appointment on the other side of Maui that kept him out of Lahaina that afternoon. But he laments that he was not there to rescue a computer that stored 50 years of his photography and a safe containing his most valuable documents and possessions. He has not been allowed back in to see if anything survived.Hill was homeless before moving into Hale Mahaolu Eono seven years ago.
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Maui County sues utility, alleging negligence over fires that ravaged LahainaMaui County has sued Hawaiian Electric Company over the fires that devastated Lahaina, saying the utility negligently failed to shut off power despite exceptionally high winds and dry conditions.
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