Once the fire crossed the highway, our friends decided to evacuate. We stayed for a while longer… who would have thought our house would burn down? We saw the fire department come down the road and Jess asked if we should leave. They said yes. We never received an alert on our phones, they never sounded the sirens and there was no formal notice to evacuate our neighborhood. Eventually, we would have seen the fire coming closer, but who knows what the state of the road would have been at that point because another power pole had fallen in front of our house.
At 6:20 p.m., we grabbed our bags and animals and loaded them into our camper that had solar panels on it so we could charge our phones. We had no idea what was happening but there were already people in the water who got trapped on Front Street.
The guys who work for Hawaii Electric Company worked so hard that day to get the roads cleared. There’s a lot of blame being pointed at every agency but from what I saw that day, Hawaii Electric Company saved so many lives. They were there within five minutes of that power pole blocking the road, which was the main exit out of Lahaina at the time. None of us knew what kind of carnage was happening in town.
The wind gusts were up to 80 to 100 miles per hour and I thought our van would tip over. It was so scary.
There's a surf spot called Guardrails where we parked for some shelter from the wind. Jess and I were holding hands. If we didn't hold on to each other, we would have been blown over. When the police told us to evacuate at 7:30 p.m., we drove down the road to Launiupoko Beach Park. It was dark and we couldn’t see our house but we could see the giant orange blaze and the smoke and it was like we were watching our house burn down.
At 11:30 p.m., the police returned and said the fire was coming and we needed to evacuate. We drove to the Olowalu Recycling & Refuse Center and slept in the van until morning. About 200 cars were doing the same.
We weren’t sure what else to do. We didn't know what was happening and couldn’t connect to social media. At 5:40 a.m., the police instructed us to go to the other side of the island.
We needed to get our bearings. We went to the Maui Ocean Center parking lot in Wailuku and ran into about a dozen people we knew. There were also a lot of tourists. Once we arrived, our phone started working again. I had 47 text messages that came through at the same time because the rest of the world knew what was happening before we did.
I have a friend in Wailuku who invited us over. They were amazing. They made my daughter pancakes, let my niece take a shower and gave us coffee while we made a plan. A couple who coordinates our business insurance and payroll asked us to stay in their two-bedroom Ohana [guest quarters] in Kihei for as long as we needed to. Once we got there and walked in, we had a sigh of relief and felt we had a safe place to stay.
Devasting Loss
The first few days in Kihei, we had hope that our house was still there or the shop wasn't a complete loss. Within the week, we watched a video that someone had posted online and saw the body shop was destroyed. So was our home.
Three of our employees lived on the other side of the island so I knew they were OK and I saw my estimator. One of our other employees, Mark Kaminsky, who lived in the apartment above my office, didn’t make it. I found out about a week later after talking with the Red Cross and FBI regarding missing persons. We are such a small shop, like family, it has been really hard to lose one of our own.
Grateful for Safety
Our good fortune is not lost on us. I am thankful that the exit from our house was not overly traumatic. Obviously, it wasn't great, but we didn't have to jump in the water or outrun the fire. There was no immediate concern for safety and our story is much less dramatic than so many others. I feel a huge amount of guilt for how easy it was for us to leave.
I'm grateful that my daughter didn't have to see flames out the back window. She doesn’t have any smoke damage and didn’t have to swim. I can't even imagine the pain and sheer fear of what happened to so many others.
Next Steps
On the day of the fire, I changed our voicemail so customers had my email address and could contact me if they needed something because we couldn’t access our phones.
It was overwhelming that first week. I felt like a zombie, knowing that I needed to do certain things but didn’t have the capacity to talk to anyone. I told vendors to cancel pending orders and contacted our insurance providers because we are on some DRPs. I told them my family is safe but the shop is likely destroyed and to not send any more claims.
The first month after the fire, I joked what I wouldn’t give just to write an estimate because it was much easier than what I had to wade through even though the physical space is gone.
I went to the community information meeting and half of the people there are my previous customers. When I looked through the list of the deceased, probably at least half of them were customers that I know from my community. I may not be close to them. We might not be friends but I know these names and I know these faces. And it hurts all the same.
Stacey Phillips Ronak