There was a brief time, after we made it safely to Jack’s apartment in Sunset Terrace, where we almost believed the situation in Lahaina Town might not be as bad as we thought. How could it be that bad when there STILL wasn’t any pertinent news on the radio? Plus, our distance from the smoke and fire made it seem like it was all just a terrible dream. I dared to hope, if only just a little, that things weren’t as awful as I feared.
After Jack turned on some flashlights in his apartment, I glanced at myself in a mirror and realized I was covered in black soot, particularly around my eyes (I had used a buff to cover my nose and mouth as we evacuated). I thought about how I must have looked to the tourists we talked to in Wahikuli (the ones who were trying to get back to Kihei and couldn’t understand why traffic was so backed up) and laughed a little. I tried to wash my face but decided a shower would be even better. The shower was cold and dark and rejuvenating. Even though I had to put my smoky, sooty clothes back on, I didn’t really care - I’ve endured worse on our long distance hikes. It felt good to be semi-clean again.
At first it was just me, Nick, Logan, Jack, and Sam (Logan, Jack, and Sam worked with Nick at Lahaina Divers and were the people we stopped to “pick up” in Wahikuli as we evacuated). Our friends Mike and Meg, who also live in Sunset Terrace, soon joined us. Once we all had a moment to take a breath, share our stories, and rinse off, we decided to go outside to see if we could possibly get some cell signal. As soon as we stepped outside the apartment building, we bumped into more of our friends who had been trying to find us - Corey, Erin, Jess, Rodrigo, Dustin, and Luke. We were grateful to have found each other. We didn’t find any cell signal, though.
By this time it was dark outside, which made the the bright orange glow in the distance appear even more menacing. The hope I had about things maybe not being as bad as I initially thought started to fade. As we looked towards the glow that was Lahaina Town, a woman walked up and shared her video from Front Street. The video was taken about 15 minutes after Nick and I fled our apartment. After watching her video (see Statement for Koa Lansford), I knew I needed to prepare myself - it looked like our apartment had already caught on fire.
8/8/23, 7:44 pm: Picture taken outside of Sunset Terrace in Honokowai, looking towards Lahaina Town (about 5 miles away)
After we all had our fill of the orange glow and random news from strangers, we went back inside. All 14 of us hung out in Jack’s apartment (14 because Jack’s wife, Molly, came home from work and joined the group). We played Farkle whilst listening to the radio for news (there still wasn’t much). It felt good to be surrounded by so many amazing people. We were all grappling with what we had each experienced; however, we managed to keep each other from dwelling on anything for too long and, surprisingly, there was a lot of laughter. While I wanted to stay up all night, soaking in the good vibes, my body had other ideas. Since there were 14 people and 3 apartments, we didn’t have to sleep on a floor - in fact, Mike and Meg offered Nick and me their pullout couch, which we gratefully accepted. I can’t think of two people I’d rather have spent that first night with. They were there for us but didn’t make us feel like victims to be pitied, which I really appreciated. The overall feeling was “we are all in this together”, which brought me great comfort.
Despite being exhausted, I barely slept that first night - once I didn’t have anything/anyone to distract me, my mind flat out refused to stop thinking of all the “what ifs” and “why didn’t I do x”. Even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to change the past no matter how much I berated myself, I was unable to stop replaying those last 20 minutes in the apartment over and over in my mind. While intellectually I knew what we lost was just stuff, the fact that I’m an extremely sentimental person made it difficult for me emotionally. Yes, our minimalistic lifestyle meant we didn’t have much; however, what we did have meant a lot (at least to me). Some things, like the Christmas ornaments we made to signify each year of our marriage, I had initially grabbed and THEN PUT DOWN, not realizing how dire the situation was until it was too late (the ornaments were heavy and took up a lot of room in my backpack, so I opted to pack more useful stuff, like sleeping mats and headlamps and blankets). Other things, like our long handled titanium spoons - which had been with us on all our hikes and so had a lot of history - I didn’t think about until it was too late. It would have been impossible to grab everything that meant something to me, I know this. I also know that we got out with the most important things - each other. There are a lot of people who didn’t.
When I started to hear huge explosions at 2:30 am (gas tanks, possibly dive cylinders, who knows), I knew sleep was going to be impossible. I didn’t hear Nick snoring, so I knew he wasn’t sleeping, either. We laid in bed until approximately 4 am, quietly thinking our own thoughts. As it started to get light outside, we decided to walk to the beach to watch the sunrise and face our new reality together.
8/9/23, 4:21am: The fire didn’t improve overnight. Picture taken from Mike and Meg’s apartment.
Final thought from 8/8: It IS good to know how I respond in an emergency. I’ve always wondered. Some things you just don’t know for sure until you are tested, and this is a test I’d say I passed. I felt calm and in control the entire time, I didn’t panic, and I made mostly sound decisions. My lessons learned for this event is that, instead of mentally trying to think of the things I needed to grab and then grabbing them, I should have looked around more (if I had, I certainly would have grabbed my long handled titanium spoon, my alpaca hoody, and my small, beloved, one-of-a kind sailboat painting from my grandma Alice’s house). Also, while I felt and acted calm, my mind certainly wasn’t as clear as I would have liked her to be - hence the mostly sound decisions. For example, when the first smoke alarm started going off in the apartment, I stopped packing so I could fan a pillow in front of it to get it to stop wailing. Why? I didn’t want it to bother the neighbors. Hahaha what a silly reaction, looking back. At the time, though, I still didn’t realize just how serious the situation was (being that there was no siren, no evacuation order, nothing on the radio….). Still. I could have done better, but I did ok. The most important thing is we got out - for that, I’m grateful.