How a Paradise Became a Death Trap

[0] From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is the daily.

[1] On Monday, we heard the story of Waiala Church and what was lost in the wildfires on Maui.

[2] What we didn't know then was the sheer scale of the catastrophe, what it felt like to experience it, and how it could be that so many people died.

[3] 111 in the latest count.

[4] Today, the miraculous story of one man who survived.

[5] And my colleague in Hawaii, Mike Baker, on how an extraordinary set of circumstances came together to turn Lahaina into a death trap.

[6] It's Friday, August 18th.

[7] Hi, is this Idris?

[8] Yes, it is.

[9] Hi.

[10] Idris, thank you for taking the time to talk to us.

[11] And I wonder, Idris, if you could introduce yourself from me. Tell me your name, your age, where you live, and what your profession is.

[12] My name is Idris, Nora.

[13] I'm 32 years old.

[14] I lived on Prison Street in Maui, Lahaina.

[15] And I was the manager, a Hilton property of the Beach and Pool, work in sales.

[16] Got it.

[17] And I wonder if you could start by telling us just kind of from the beginning how your day started.

[18] So actually it was my first true day off in the long time.

[19] And I woke up in the middle of the night, which was Monday night, Tuesday morning, around 3 or 4 a .m. when we lost power.

[20] So it got pretty hot.

[21] So I opened up the windows.

[22] And by the time I woke up around 6, 7 a .m., I noticed we didn't have service neither.

[23] Self service.

[24] Yeah.

[25] No more fun service, no power.

[26] It was very windy.

[27] So I texted the front desk manager to ask them about my staff.

[28] I want to make sure they were safe.

[29] And they told me that they were keeping the pull open.

[30] And honestly, I was just annoyed.

[31] I was like, I've been waiting for this day off forever.

[32] And no power, it's windy.

[33] And I was like kind of complaining.

[34] No one knew, you know, that it was going to get to that point.

[35] You know, we didn't even know it was a hurricane.

[36] We just thought it was windy.

[37] So I went on my day and put up the cabinets in my bathroom And then I, you know, started reading my Kindle And that was pretty much just one of those days And were you aware of the fire at that point?

[38] Absolutely not.

[39] There was no fire in the morning that I was aware of.

[40] We had no warnings at all.

[41] And so I think it was around noon or one.

[42] One of my neighbors came and knocked on my door And he said, hey, you need to come out and see this.

[43] So I came out in front of my house you know, I have a little cottage.

[44] Behind my house, I could see a lot of smoke.

[45] And it was kind of far, maybe like a mile, maybe a little less than a mile away.

[46] And it was a lot of smoke.

[47] There's a black smoke.

[48] I go, something's burning.

[49] And all our neighbors were meeting.

[50] They were talking about an escape plan.

[51] And then I said, you know, it's kind of far away.

[52] We have scooters and bikes.

[53] And I don't think it's safe to be on the road anyways.

[54] You know, we'll be safer in our homes, you know.

[55] So I called my cat, an outdoor cat, and I called her, and I couldn't find her all day.

[56] And then I just gave up, and I went home, and I closed my door.

[57] And then my neighbor came back, maybe an hour later, and he said, there's another fire.

[58] And it was closer.

[59] It's actually the street behind us.

[60] And I have a scooter.

[61] So I actually went to go check out how close the fire was.

[62] and it was pretty close but still kind of far away it was in front of an apartment complex and right across from that there was another house and there were bushes that were starting to catch on fire so I parked my scooter and I ran into the yard and I was looking for the neighbors to ask them for their host because I wanted to like, it was small enough to like put down and so I saw the neighbors they were already in their car and the driveway so I knocked on the window and the guy didn't even say, he didn't even respond.

[63] I don't remember him responding.

[64] And by the time I went back in the garden to find the hose, another guy saw it and grabbed it, and we were like pulling down the fire in his bushes.

[65] And after that, I got on Front Street, which is a street that goes along, you know, the ocean.

[66] And I see there's this restaurant up in flame.

[67] And I'm like, okay, what's going on?

[68] Like, how is this big?

[69] It just didn't make sense.

[70] It didn't make sense.

[71] So I couldn't go.

[72] through.

[73] We were so much smoking fire.

[74] What time is it at that point, Idris?

[75] What time is that?

[76] I think it's like 2 .30.

[77] You know, it had to be 2 or 2 .30, something like that.

[78] And I remember seeing like a white SUV and this Asian woman was trying to cut in line, which she could even cut in line.

[79] Clearly she was panicking.

[80] And I saw people running and straight in front of me. There's a medical center.

[81] And I remember actually seeing a line of people trying to get into medical center.

[82] They were all staying in front of it.

[83] And there's a big parking lot.

[84] So they were taking shots.

[85] shelter in it.

[86] It was pretty bad.

[87] It was pretty bad.

[88] I was on front street.

[89] And so I made it right.

[90] I turned my head and behind me there's a whole business on fire.

[91] I was like, holy, like, everything was on fire.

[92] Like I didn't understand how things started to catch on fire.

[93] It didn't make sense.

[94] And now I started to panic.

[95] So I went back to the neighbors, but the neighbors were all gone.

[96] Idris, what did you think at that moment when you came back to your house and the neighbors were all gone?

[97] I felt kind of lost.

[98] And the wind, you know, there was wind and there was trees falling down.

[99] And I screamed for my cat.

[100] And I saw her run under the house and she didn't want to come out.

[101] You know, so I was panicking.

[102] You know, reality started to set in.

[103] And so I said, okay, maybe, you know, the safest place to be right now is here because I wouldn't even know where to go.

[104] and so I'm closing the door and about five minutes everything turned black outside and so I opened the curtain and I saw that medical center across the street was up in flame to the sky and I couldn't understand how like I just saw people like there was nothing like five ten minutes ago and it really looked like someone put gasoline all over the building and he just like took up It didn't make sense how like a stone building could burn so fast.

[105] And so I opened the door, still calling my cat, and I felt something burning on my shoulder, and it was debris like amber.

[106] And I look up in the sky, and it was literally fire coming down the sky.

[107] It was raining fire.

[108] And now I said, I have to get out of here.

[109] What time was that, Idris?

[110] About 3 o 'clock, I'd say.

[111] I noticed that the neighbors had turned all the hose.

[112] and wet, got everything wet.

[113] So I took one of the hose and got my door wet and, you know, trying to, we still thought that we could prevent, you know, prevent anything from happening.

[114] Yeah.

[115] And so, you know, I got everything I could, you know, all the necessities, clothes and wallet and, you know, pictures or whatever and put everything in two big bags.

[116] And I ran out of the house.

[117] And as I ran out of the house, there was smoke everywhere.

[118] and I saw one of my neighbors coughing who's right in front of the house in front of the street and he was just coughing.

[119] And I said, what are you doing here?

[120] It's like, oh, I went to the store and I said, okay, let's get on my scooter.

[121] So he came behind me on my scooter and the fire came from uphill.

[122] It was coming down.

[123] So to me, the safest place of this fire is water.

[124] And so, you know, in the panic, I was like, we have to go to the harbor.

[125] And then I couldn't even get on prison street because it was a power line that was down.

[126] It was moving so fast with the wind and it was so much smoke.

[127] So I went in the parking lot across where the medical center was burning and it was full of smoke.

[128] And I almost hit a car that was parked, but it was on.

[129] I saw it with the brake lights and there was a door open.

[130] And this tall Hawaiian man came out and he was just waving his arms and he was screaming.

[131] I didn't know what he was saying.

[132] He was clearly speaking English, but he was just panicked.

[133] I don't remember.

[134] I just remember his face.

[135] His eyes and his eyebrows were just raised up to the max.

[136] And he's now, like I said, he was just speaking gibberish to me. And there was so much noise outside the wind and the explosions.

[137] And I didn't know what he was saying.

[138] And there was no way he could, he can get on the scooter with us, you know.

[139] And then I tried to get out of the parking lot.

[140] And we got stuck on one of the curb.

[141] And I told Damon, which was my neighbor, I gave up.

[142] And we pushed a scooter back up.

[143] He got back on, and then we got on Front Street.

[144] And on Front Street, I was just chaos.

[145] I could hear, you know, screams.

[146] And then I can see people, but I could hear him scream.

[147] Scary screams.

[148] Screams of pain I've never heard before.

[149] They were clearly people burning alive.

[150] Like, it was a deep pain, you know.

[151] And people throwing up.

[152] And it was just, it was horrifying.

[153] It was horrifying to hear that.

[154] I'm so glad I couldn't see It was so it was black Because there's so much smoke But we could clearly hear them all around us All around us It felt like we were in hell The wind itself The wind was a scary thing The wind was so hot It was burning our skin It was so strong Because everything was on fire It was just It felt like someone was pressing A blow dryer on your skin And I told Damon Listen I can't see anything You got to tell me me want to turn to the harbor because I can't see nothing.

[155] And so we finally got to the harbor and I left my scooter there.

[156] And at the edge of the water on the harbor, there's a little house, little, it's called the Harbor Master's Hut.

[157] And it's where people come in by the tickets for the ferry.

[158] It's a little brick house, very small.

[159] And we go and we go in front of it.

[160] So we had our back against the wall and we were facing the ocean.

[161] And we're just waiting.

[162] We just didn't know what to do.

[163] Did you say anything to him?

[164] No, we were not talking.

[165] We didn't know.

[166] I mean, in my mind, I'm like, okay, we're going to wait here.

[167] At least this water, which was crazy, by the way, you know, so windy.

[168] And at least, like, we're not going to burn.

[169] That's what I was thinking.

[170] But a couple minutes waiting there, I saw a shadow just run and jump into water on the side of the house.

[171] And I said, Damon, do you see this?

[172] And we look in the water as a big pit bulls just drowning in front of us.

[173] And that's really when, like, It felt like the beginning of a movie, like a horror movie, you know.

[174] And he must have been very scared to do that because he clearly didn't know how to swim.

[175] Yeah.

[176] And, you know, the people were so intimidating.

[177] You know, he had the big head and yellow eyes.

[178] And I didn't know I want to help him, but I didn't know if he was going to bite me or pull him with him in the water.

[179] You know, so I kept calling him and calling him, but he couldn't do it.

[180] He tried his best to do it, but he couldn't do it.

[181] And his head kept going underwater and he kept coming up and it was always less and less.

[182] And I'll never forget the look he gave me in his eyes.

[183] He just gave up and his head went underwater.

[184] And I told Damon to hold my feet and I took my shirt off and somehow I managed to grab by the collar and pulled him out.

[185] And we just, we gave him water and we tried to calm him down.

[186] He was just walking in circles.

[187] He was trying to leave, but every time he walked on the edge of the house, the wind was so hot he was just turning around and come back.

[188] So I tried to call him down.

[189] He was sit next to me and then he was sitting next to him.

[190] Damon he was in panic mode you know and we're talking to him and then I called the police and I said hey we're on the harbor we're stuck you guys had to come get us and the lady was just she didn't know what to say she said I'm sorry we can't come get you everything was in flames and they were overwhelmed I hung up you know and I just remember seeing debris falling from the sky and our bags kept catching on fire.

[191] So we kept trying to remove debris on ourselves every time it fell in our skin, you know, trying to not to burn.

[192] Wow.

[193] What time was that approximately?

[194] I think it was about maybe four o 'clock at this point.

[195] Miraculously, I saw my phone that had one bar service.

[196] So I try to call my best friend Yassim, and I told my best friend, hey, I love you, tell everybody I love them, it's going to be okay.

[197] You know, here's my mom's number.

[198] Don't call her now.

[199] Wait.

[200] You know, let her sleep.

[201] And then tell her tomorrow we don't have service and I'm fine.

[202] I don't want her to wake up and see the news and, you know, panic.

[203] So he, he was confused.

[204] Like, what's going on?

[205] What are you mean?

[206] You know?

[207] Were you preparing because you thought you might not make it?

[208] Oh, yeah.

[209] We didn't, we didn't think we're going to make it.

[210] I looked up in this guy and I said, God, please not today.

[211] Not like this.

[212] And I said, God, I'm sorry for everything and I want to be better.

[213] And I, I, I, I, I think I was going to make it.

[214] And after I hung up with him, I called the police again.

[215] And she gave me the same answer.

[216] She said, I'm so sorry.

[217] And, you know, I could feel the frustration in her voice.

[218] She would just help, but she didn't know.

[219] And I felt so bad for her because she probably had so many calls like this.

[220] And so I hung up again, and I was just frustrated.

[221] So at this point, I thought maybe I could get into Harbor Messrs HUD, the little house.

[222] Damon had a knife with him, and he cut the screen off.

[223] and I started punching the window with all my strength, all my strength.

[224] And so I fractured my hand.

[225] The window was so thick.

[226] You wouldn't even do anything.

[227] And so I called the police the third time.

[228] And I said, if you guys don't come right now, we're going to die.

[229] And she said, you guys have to jump in the water.

[230] And I said, no way.

[231] You want us to jump in a hurricane at night with all this smoke?

[232] Like, there's no way we can jump.

[233] The water was crazy.

[234] And she said, you have no choice.

[235] You have to jump in the water.

[236] And I hung up and I looked at Damon.

[237] It's like, we have to jump.

[238] And Damon said, there's no way I'm jumping.

[239] I'm not jumping.

[240] And I told him, listen, either we burn or we drown.

[241] And, you know, I waited a couple more minutes.

[242] I tried to convince them.

[243] And I said, you know, I'm jumping.

[244] They were rocks maybe 100 feet away or 150 feet.

[245] I'm not really good with distance, but, you know, like a jetty.

[246] And I decided to make for it.

[247] And I try my best.

[248] But, you know, I was breathing smoke the whole time.

[249] And you were swimming.

[250] going nowhere.

[251] You're fighting waves like the ocean.

[252] You can't do anything.

[253] I'm not like the best swimmer.

[254] And I finally made it.

[255] And I look back and I scream at Damon and he was just terrified.

[256] He was not, you know, he was next to the dog.

[257] And I told him jump and I kept screaming.

[258] And he just didn't want to.

[259] And so on the other side of the jetty, I saw three surfers sitting down with a serveboard on their back.

[260] And I said, I have to ask him for the serverboards to go and get my friend.

[261] And they said, there's no way.

[262] The wind is burning our skin.

[263] So they were using the surfboard as a shield.

[264] Even though we're in the middle of the water, the wind was still that hot.

[265] So I went back to the beginning of the rocks where I started.

[266] And I could see him hanging on to the harbor with half his body in the water.

[267] And I kept screaming, you need to let go, you need to let go and he screamed my shoes are too heavy and so as it's time i just made the decision to jump and go get him so i got back in the water and i got back next to him i try to go and take his shoes off but i can't even find his feet the ocean were just pushing me against the wall and i and i told me you have to follow me so i turned back around to the jetty and i was trying to stay underwater as much as I could because the wind was so hot.

[268] But every time I came up, like, I was just bringing smoke.

[269] I mean, I was just bringing smoke for, like, the whole time.

[270] So I got back on the jetty for the second time.

[271] And I see, he jumped in the water.

[272] He's trying to make his way too left.

[273] I see.

[274] And the way he was swimming, I said, there's no way he's going to make it.

[275] He was just struggling, just swallowing water and coughing.

[276] And somehow he managed to get very close to the rock and I pulled him up.

[277] You know, it was a miracle that he made it.

[278] You know, he's overweight and he's, you know, older.

[279] It was a miracle.

[280] And, you know, we still had debris falling on us and we had a wave just coming over us.

[281] We were holding onto the rocks to not, like, get pulled or sucked in by the ocean.

[282] It was just a nightmare.

[283] What time was that?

[284] I don't know.

[285] Maybe at like 5 .30.

[286] I don't remember.

[287] It was nighttime.

[288] I mean, it looked like nighttime, at least.

[289] And then I heard the dog screaming.

[290] So I was like, I have to go back, and I jump back in the water.

[291] You know, I try to get back on the harbor.

[292] I got up, and the dog didn't want to move.

[293] He was just too freaked out.

[294] He was laying against the wall.

[295] His eyes closed and just screaming.

[296] There's no way I could carry him.

[297] It was a big pit bull, and I had one, you know, my hand was fracture or broken.

[298] So I thought, if I try to grab me in the water, he's already freaked out.

[299] We're both going to drown.

[300] You know, he's going to die for sure, and I'm probably not going to make it.

[301] So in one of my bags, I had a blanket, like a small blanket, like for my sofa, and I dipped it in the ocean five or six times, and I put it on top of the dog.

[302] That's all I could do.

[303] And I took one of my bags, and I jumped back in the ocean, and then I almost drowned.

[304] I was just so exhausted, and I panicked halfway.

[305] And I was praying to God, he's helped me. And I thank God I made it to the jetty, and I went back on the other side.

[306] And I talked to Damon, and he was not answering.

[307] And I grabbed his hand, and he just held my hand.

[308] He was just in shock.

[309] He wasn't saying anything.

[310] And so I was holding Damon's hand for about a couple hours.

[311] And it felt like the wind calmed down.

[312] And I remember I was.

[313] I was grabbing Damon's hand and I say, oh, the wind kind of can't calm down.

[314] And as soon as I said that, everything lit up.

[315] And I turned around and I saw a line of boats on fire coming towards us.

[316] And I remember saying to Damon, you got to be kidding me. All the boats that were tied to the harbor, all the ropes, you know, burned down.

[317] And they were following the current back to sea.

[318] and they're all following each other on the perfect line he would think that someone was on the boat steering them I had to tell Damien you're seeing this right and he's like yeah and they were getting really close to us almost circling us to feel the heat and then you know they were exploding and thank God they followed the current out to sea they went straight out instead of going all the way around and then maybe an hour after that I saw a light you know far away and I told Damon And I said, hey, I think there's a boat over there.

[319] And we were, like, screaming.

[320] I was screaming at the top of my lungs.

[321] And they were, like, coming towards us, like, thank God.

[322] Oh, my God.

[323] They were screaming so hard.

[324] And the surfer were screaming.

[325] And it was the code guard.

[326] And they were like, we can't get close.

[327] You guys have to jump in the water, you know, because it was so rough.

[328] They were crashing the rocks.

[329] And then out of nowhere, there's a couple that were standing in front of the harbor mess was hot.

[330] And they had no clothes.

[331] They only had shorts or swimming suit.

[332] And that guy who had shorts, he was just red.

[333] Like he was just burnt from the wind.

[334] He was just, I could see even from there.

[335] You know, he was all red.

[336] And I kept screaming, jump in the water, jump in the water.

[337] But, you know, I don't think he was just processing anything.

[338] So the Coast Guard came and got them.

[339] And then they came to us last.

[340] And I jumped first.

[341] And they got me in.

[342] I just lay down on my back.

[343] And I could just see amber just falling on us.

[344] Like the sky had no stars.

[345] The amber was the stars, red stars in the sky.

[346] That's what it looked like.

[347] Just a black sky with red stars.

[348] You're just falling down.

[349] I was flowing on the ocean, but I felt like I was floating in space.

[350] It's hard to describe because everything happened so fast.

[351] but I was thanking God I said thank you thank you thank you I don't deserve this I really just it was just unbelievable that we made it and Damon he managed to make it he managed to get into water I don't know how I don't even see him but I remember they pulled him in and I was like thank God we made it and I said oh how did you guys find us and they said we got a call that someone might be on the harbor so i think that lady you know she relayed the call and finally got to us and i said thank god we made it and he said oh no not yet we still have to go through the storm and i said where we're going he said we don't know everything's on fire and i looked behind me and it was just it was just um it looked like war it was just flames up to the guy, the whole, I mean, the whole town, and the darkness.

[352] How long were you out there on the boat with him?

[353] Myself forever, but I think it was a couple hours, something like that.

[354] And remember I was saying that the couple that came from the harbor, they had no shirts.

[355] Yeah.

[356] The guy was like burned everywhere, and he had like blood oozing from his leg.

[357] It was pretty bad.

[358] And then the girl, it wasn't as bad.

[359] She came and she gave me a pair of underwear to, like, cover the, smoke because we're still there's still smoke out sea and I was like I don't want to put it underwear on my nose and then I recognized it and it was my underwear and I looked at her and she was wearing my shirt and my pair of shorts and it said where did you get this and she said oh I got it from the harbor so then I took the underwear and I covered myself and I was like okay this is mine did you tell her what did she say yeah this is my shirt I bought this in Vegas like in 2016 and she had to cover herself.

[360] I get it.

[361] She was like in her bathing city.

[362] It was burning.

[363] She was wearing maxed hose.

[364] This was all from your backpack.

[365] This is around from my backpack.

[366] Yeah, the other one that I left there.

[367] Oh my gosh.

[368] And so we got to Malia Harbor and there's a bunch of, you know, Coast Guard waiting for us.

[369] And then, you know, they grabbed us and made sure we got to land and they directed us through to a bus, a city bus.

[370] So where did the bus take you?

[371] To Maui High School.

[372] So they made a shelter there.

[373] And, I mean, it was just a lot of people.

[374] The big TV and the news playing, everybody standing and looking.

[375] And then when we arrived, of course, we were like covering suit and all black.

[376] So everyone was looking at us.

[377] And I was barefoot.

[378] The people kept turning my feet.

[379] Everybody knew, you know, we're the ones who survived.

[380] you know everybody that was in the shelter or the lucky ones so everybody was kind of quiet it was a quiet night and so we we signed in with the Red Cross and I got examined by the nurse and she listened to one of my lungs and she said that my lung you know I need to get checked out and my hand as well you know she's like wow it's probably broken and I got a blanket and I went And I found the corner of the gym, like all the way in the back, there was no one.

[381] And then I just went by myself.

[382] And I just put my headphones on, but I didn't have anything just to kind of stop the noise, the echoes.

[383] I needed to be alone.

[384] Could you see Damien?

[385] Damon was still eating, so he was doing pretty good.

[386] Was he talking to people?

[387] He was talking to everyone.

[388] Yeah, yeah, he's a chatter.

[389] When he called me today, he's like, I'll never forget you.

[390] He was a little drunk, and I guess he was coping with it.

[391] And, you know, he said we were brothers for life now.

[392] Did you think that too?

[393] Yeah, I mean, me and him went through something that, you know, not other people went through.

[394] So, yeah, it was something I never forget.

[395] How long were you in the shelter?

[396] I was there for two days, almost three.

[397] Oh, wow.

[398] Yeah.

[399] And where are you now, Idris?

[400] We are at a hotel.

[401] We were just waiting.

[402] We don't know what's going on.

[403] So no one knows what they're going to do.

[404] I mean, I'm telling you, I don't have shoes.

[405] You know, and I don't want to complain because I'm alive and I feel like I shouldn't be, you know.

[406] but I don't know what to feel right now.

[407] I feel lost.

[408] And I lost literally everything.

[409] Everything I had and never get it back.

[410] And, you know, I was down to like the last cabinets and I had just the curtains to put up in my room.

[411] And then I was done in my new place.

[412] Everything was brand new.

[413] I worked so hard, you know, to have what I have.

[414] And then to find out.

[415] I was one week away from being insured, and I lost everything.

[416] I was literally, I needed one more curtain from my bedroom, and that's it.

[417] I was home.

[418] Yeah, I worked so hard.

[419] And I felt guilty because I'm complaining about my possession when people lost, you know, their loved ones.

[420] Yeah.

[421] You know, and I can't imagine what people went through with kids in their arms and grandma and had to, I don't know if I would have made it, you know, the panic to have to have to, for somebody else like that, you know, you know, they found a couple hugging in their car burned down.

[422] You know, I can't imagine.

[423] I can't imagine what they went through.

[424] People with kids and my friends, grandmother, a retirement home burned down and they can't find her.

[425] So I know friends of mine, their parents and relatives, you know, probably died and died for sure.

[426] And so what the hell happened?

[427] Like, why?

[428] What happened?

[429] How, it's not like, you know, Hawaii is known to have hurricanes.

[430] Like, why weren't we ready?

[431] Like, how is this possible?

[432] With all this money from tourism coming in, like, like, I don't understand how this could have happened.

[433] There is nothing.

[434] No warnings, no alarms, nothing at all.

[435] When you think about it now, how do you make sense of it?

[436] what i don't make sense of it it just is still a miracle that i'm alive and it's it's it's still i mean it you know it felt like pompey that's what it felt like just raining fire and everybody burning and the sirens and in the wind the explosions no one knew where to go but what's going to stick with me the most is definitely the the screams and that dog when he looked at me in the water and the guy in the parking lot who was screaming, but I just didn't know what he was saying.

[437] Do you see those things when you close your eyes?

[438] I'll see him when my eyes are open.

[439] But I'm lucky.

[440] I'm one of the lucky ones.

[441] You know, I have to start from scratch.

[442] I am lost, but in God, I'm alive.

[443] We'll be right back.

[444] So, Mike, my colleagues and I at the Daily have been talking to survivors of the Hawaii fire.

[445] And we just heard one of those stories from a man named Idris, a survivor.

[446] And at the end of our conversation, he had some questions that I think a lot of us have about how so many people could have died.

[447] You know, what went wrong?

[448] So you've been in Maui reporting, and we wanted to ask you some of these questions.

[449] First, I want to start with setting the table with a few things we do know, which is we know that the fire started around 6 .30 in the morning, most likely from a downed power line that sparked on dry grass.

[450] And we also know that firefighters responded to that, and around mid -morning, they declared it contained.

[451] But obviously, it wasn't.

[452] So why don't you pick up from there, Mike?

[453] How did this essentially low -grade brush fire turn into this monster?

[454] Yeah, I mean, that day you had a real confluence of factors that set up the disaster.

[455] You had some really strong winds coming down the mountain side that a lot of people have attributed to a hurricane passing a few hundred miles to the south.

[456] You had a drought that had been in the region for quite some time.

[457] You had these really dry invasive grasses, some non -native species that have been there since the island's plantation days or the aftermath of the plantation days.

[458] And, you know, I think you really had this other factor of firefighters being stretched then.

[459] This was a bad fire day across the island.

[460] They were strained across a few different places and didn't have their full capacity in Lahaina when things started getting out of control.

[461] And so early morning there was this fire up on the hillside, more than a mile above the commercial district, the front street area of Lahaina.

[462] they declare it contained and eventually start going off to do other things but one of the neighbors I talked to said there was still just bits of smoke like the ground was hot like there was still just something smoldering there and as the afternoon went on the winds are roaring and all of a sudden the flames are back and that point the winds are so strong strong that these little embers that are getting tossed into the air are soaring down the hillside.

[463] They're racing down the hillside.

[464] The winds are so fast that the fire starts just to skip down.

[465] And pretty soon it's just headed towards some of the densest housing neighborhoods in town.

[466] And the people we've talked to in that neighborhood said they essentially had no chance to prepare for evacuation, no warning that they should be getting out.

[467] the fire was on top of them so fast.

[468] Yeah, to that point, we heard from Idris and other people we talked to that, you know, there was no alarm, right?

[469] No warning.

[470] Like, people didn't even know to get out until the fire was basically on their doorstep.

[471] Yeah, it's interesting because the community has these warning sirens throughout town.

[472] And every month, residents there get to hear them.

[473] They have this whirring horn sound.

[474] And it's called an all -hazard system, but the county is saying that it's really a system not designed for fire.

[475] It's designed for things like a tsunami.

[476] They felt like it was really not something that they had planned and considered to use in the event of a fire.

[477] I think a lot of people, a lot of the residents feel like this would have been the ideal circumstance to use it.

[478] Cell service was going down.

[479] Electricity was getting knocked out when there's so many people sitting in their homes and they have no idea what's coming, something that could jar them to awareness that they may soon be incinerated, I think would have been to a lot of people a big help.

[480] Okay, so once people realize the fire is a big problem and it's starting to roar into the town of Lahaina and they need to get out, what happens then?

[481] What do they do?

[482] A lot of people we talked to mentioned traffic jams, everybody on the same road, gunning their engines, trying to get out and getting stuck.

[483] Yeah.

[484] You know, I think it's important to know there's really only two roads in and out of town.

[485] And one of them, the fire was going across.

[486] It was closed off to the fire.

[487] The other, we know there were at different points power lines that had fallen across the road.

[488] And critically, you know, once they were on the roads, people had no way to pass them.

[489] They were waiting for crews to come clear the roads.

[490] You can see the traffic jams in some of the videos starting to build as people wait for a way to get south, a way to get north, a way to get anywhere out of town.

[491] And to make matters worse, you know, the fire crews are racing around and initially trying to slow the spread of the fire.

[492] but soon we were talking to some of them that they were tapping into hydrants and the stream was getting weaker.

[493] You know, the spray would come out and the wind was so strong, it would just turn to mist.

[494] And then by the time they got further down the hill, the hydrants are basically empty.

[495] The county now says that the fire had burned so much so fast that there were homes all over town leaking water and it left the firefighters with nothing.

[496] to fight this fire.

[497] They were left watching the town burn with no way to stop it, and then instead were forced into basically try and get people out of town, try and direct them, and even then, they were down on Front Street, stuck there, and that's where things really just turned into a death trap.

[498] So, Mike, hearing you talk about all of this and really lay out these problems, you know, clearly this was an extraordinarily unlucky series of events.

[499] You know, fire from a down power line driven by hurricane -forced winds roars into this town.

[500] And because of other power lines that are down, the roads are closed.

[501] But also, it sounds maybe like some of this could have been avoided.

[502] Like, to what degree was this bad luck versus human error?

[503] I think there's certainly a...

[504] sense that this confluence of factors would have been really hard to overcome that this was going to be a serious and devastating situation, no matter how swift the response once the fire took hold.

[505] At the same time, we have a situation with a lot of missed opportunities to have slowed the spread of the fire and save more people.

[506] You know, there's already lawsuits against the electric company, challenging them on whether they should have cut off power before the fire even started.

[507] Questions about the crews on the power lines and whether they could have done more to clear roads at the time when people were trying to escape.

[508] There's a investigation from the state attorney general that's exploring the overall wildfire and the response.

[509] The warning system, the preparations the county could have done, the resources available for the fire department.

[510] There's going to be a lot of questions for, I think, several years.

[511] But I think in the bigger picture, there's going to be a lot of questions about the future of West Maui in a place where so many people want to live.

[512] There's so many residents that want to be here, tourists that want to come.

[513] It's a special place with a deep history, former capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

[514] And these days, there's a sense.

[515] strain on the resources.

[516] There's growing drought.

[517] There's growing winds.

[518] And there's a sense that the wildfire risk here is going to continue expanding as well.

[519] And it really raises some questions about the future of Lahaina at a time when right now this community kind of has to start from scratch.

[520] And prevent something with this much collective anguish from ever happening again.

[521] Absolutely.

[522] Mike, thank you.

[523] Sabrina, thank you.

[524] On Thursday, the chief of the Maui Emergency Management Agency resigned.

[525] The resignation of Herman Ondaya, who cited health reasons for his departure, came one day after he defended not using outdoor sirens to warn about the fire.

[526] We'll be right back.

[527] Here's what else you should know today.

[528] On Thursday, the sheriff's office in Fulton County, Georgia, said that it was invested investigating threats made online against grand jurors who voted to indict former President Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the results of the state's 2020 election.

[529] Georgia requires that the jurors be named in the indictment, and soon after it was released, on Monday, the jurors' identities began appearing on social media.

[530] Some jurors had their pictures, social media profiles, and possible addresses and phone numbers shared, in some cases with a suggestion that they should be harassed.

[531] Today's episode was produced by Lindsay Garrison, Will Reed, and Sydney Harper.

[532] It was edited by Michael Benoit and Liz O 'Balen, contains original music by Marianne Lazzano and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley.

[533] Special thanks to Nicholas Bogle Burroughs, Sean Hewler, Serge Coaleski, and Alon de la Carrier.

[534] Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansverg of Wonderly.

[535] That's it for the daily.

[536] I'm Sabrina Tavernisi.

[537] See you on Monday.