Firefighters in the area nearly become trapped themselves, losing a truck to the flames, Pelletier says. Meanwhile, police officers knock down a fence to help others escape, the police chief says later. A telephone pole falls behind their car, causing an accident and blocking a side street. The first sign of trouble for Nate Baird and Courtney Stapleton comes at 3:40 p.m., when their 9- and 10-year-old sons say they can smell s’mores.īy the time the family piles into the car with their dog and Baird’s mother and joins a caravan of evacuating residents, parts of the subdivision are beginning to burn. “If there was a downed power line that was live, we wanted to make sure that you didn’t go over a downed live power line.” “We did not close or forbid people from getting out of Lahaina,” Pelletier said. Maui Police Chief John Pelletier confirmed that at a news conference two weeks later. “And I’m assuming it’s because there’s been some downed power lines or some downed trees.” “So the police were blocking roads, the exit, some of the exit roads out,” he says. He cuts through parking lots and side streets, and ends up on Front Street near the ocean. “And then we see all the other cars driving onto Front Street, so we go that way too.” “I remember thinking, shoot, maybe there is something dangerous ahead,” Cicchino says. He records video of it spreading at 3:06 p.m., as large plumes of smoke rise near Lahainaluna Road and are carried downtown by the wind.Īround 3:20 p.m., Lahaina resident Kevin Eliason is watching the black smoke from a vantage point closer to downtown when passersby tell him a power pole has been knocked onto the tar roof of a gas station two blocks away, creating fireballs that are being blown in the wind, he said.Įliason said the fire knocked the power out in the area soon after.Ībout a mile later, he runs into a line of cones blocking the highway. Treu’s neighbor Robert Arconado said the fire reignites around 2 p.m. While many of Maui County’s fire crews work to extinguish the Upcountry fire on the eastern half of the island, the wind is toppling power poles and scattering embers like seeds in Lahaina. That means many of Lahaina’s 3,000 public school students are home alone while their parents work.Ĭontained is not controlled, however, and the town is being battered by high winds. The assurance puts many residents at ease the high winds have prompted the closure of some public schools for the day, and others have not yet started. Small brush fires aren’t unusual for Lahaina, and the fire department declares this one 100% contained by 9:55 a.m. The timeline reveals the chaos that overtook the town. The Associated Press has filed public records requests for location reports and other documentation including video and internal communications to clarify the details of the police and fire response, but Maui County has not yet released that information.Ī team of Associated Press journalists documented the first hours of the deadly wildfire by interviewing dozens of survivors and public officials, examining public documents and analyzing citizen videos, satellite images and publicly available data. And later, as the fire began to swallow homes in its ravenous path, Maui County emergency officials declined to use an extensive network of emergency sirens to alert Lahaina’s residents to flee.ĭuring a news conference Tuesday, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said police officers drove up and down streets, knocking on doors and using loudspeakers to tell people to leave, but he didn’t say exactly where and what time those efforts occurred.
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