Surfing Waves

Just in case you are wondering I am on Kauai and not affected directly by the fires that have devastated Maui (and some on Hawaii island. ) But it's pretty messed up with 36 reported dead so far and over 270 buildings destroyed. My friends there all seem to be okay. I lived in that area when I was 1 to 4 years old (almost 70 years ago)

death toll just updated to 53

This is devastating and so sad, my sympathy to the people on Lahaina. A colleague is there for vacation and barely escaped a firestorm.

It sounds like there are probably many who never got out of their houses or cars. There was no warning because electricity was out and cell towers down. in one area someone was riding around on a bicycle yelling for everyone to evacuate. They have search dogs coming from Nevada to look for remains among the rubble. It's sounds like before they knew they had to go it might have been too hot outside to leave their houses due to 60 mph winds blowing the fire and hot air along. The roads were blocked with people trying to leave and fallen trees/telephone poles blocking some roads. Some survivors had to leave their cars and jump in the ocean to escape. What a horrid thing.

So much native Hawaiian history in Lahaina lost forever!

Death toll is up to 67 now and estimated structures damaged is more than 1000

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2023/08/13/live-governor-maui-county-hold-news-conference-with-latest-wildfire-response/ Death count is up to 93 and very likely much more to go. It's so horrible that people were burned alive. I can't imagine a much worse way to go but I guess the suffering was a relatively short duration and they are not suffering anymore. Now the survivors are suffering

The photos looks like post apocalypse. Now it really makes sense why California home insurance spiked and many got cancelled.

This from my sister who was caught there while at a conference:

We were between two fires for 4 days. But we had a room with running water. No power, no cell service. We did have a radio in the car for news. We could go 3 blocks uphill to a small shopping complex and fire station for food. We were over the top scared all the time. When they finally were able to contain the Lahaina fire away from the road, they started bussing the refugees to the airport and quickly filled every single hotel near the airport. Day before yesterday they say 14,000 people flew out of Maui to Honolulu! Yesterday we packed up our stuff, and stuff from a stranded couple on scooters, and drove their stuff to the bus place and continued on to the other side of the island. 30 min after we got to a place to get first coffee and a good meal, we were notified that the road we just came from was closed due to huge accident!
We sat and just blinked at each other and read days of emails and texts.

the fire was spreading at a mile a minute. The death count is up to 96 and undoubtedly will go much higher. I imagine it's possible they may not be able to identify some remains due to being completely incinerated. There is much concern over why the emergency sirens weren't activated. My guess is that fires aren't usually a reason to activate the sirens so there was no system to make sure that the sirens were activated and the fire department was overwhelmed and they would be the ones to request the activation