Sanford Hill told NBC News he still has no idea how many of his neighbors also got out of their assisted living facility in Lahaina before it was destroyed in the wildfires.
Hill knows of just three former neighbors who escaped, and some of those neighbors have heard from a handful of others. But that’s it. He has called the company that owned the 34-unit reduced-rent building, Hale Mahaolu Eono, but staff told him they don’t have any information, he said.
Like thousands of other residents of Lahaina, Hill and many of his neighbors at Hale Mahaolu Eono stayed home for the first half of Aug. 8, watching firefighters trying to extinguish a fire to the east of town. He said he received an alert about the fire on his phone but there was no urgency to it. A building manager went around telling tenants they may have to evacuate. But word went around later that the fire had been contained, and the firefighters left.
Hill said that he moved into Hale Mahaolu Eono in 2016 after a period of homelessness. The cheap rent — $144 a month — made it easy to live comfortably in one of Hawaii’s most popular areas on his $914 monthly social security check.
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