Some Lahaina residents return to find what’s left of their homes after Maui wildfires

Amna Nawaz:

It's been seven weeks since the deadliest American wildfires in more than a century swept through the Hawaiian island of Maui. And some residents in the hardest-hit neighborhoods of Lahaina are just now finally getting a chance to return home.

William Brangham and our team report from Maui on what life is like for those who survived.

William Brangham:

What goes through your mind when you see fire that close to your home?

Edith Jacinto, Lahaina Resident:

Oh my God. Am I going to die? This house is gone. Like, our life for 50 years here at this home is going to be gone.

William Brangham:

Edith Jacinto thought shed always live in her family's home in Lahaina on the west coast of Maui. But now, more than a month-and-a-half after wildfires destroyed their house, along with most of her beloved community, she's still trying to process all that's been lost.

Edith Jacinto:

Every time I would drive past, it was like, I will either cry or I get goose bumps, or I just say, like, this is not real right now. This is not real. But it is.

William Brangham:

Edith cares full-time for her parents, her 101-year-old dad, Arsenio, and her 83 year-old mom, Victoria, who needs oxygen 24/7.

On that terrible day, the Jacintos were all together at home when Edith's nephew sent a startling message: A fire was fast approaching.

Edith Jacinto:

He tried to get a hold of all of us texting or calling, saying: You guys got to get out. Like, Auntie, it jumped. The fire jumped across the street. It's by the park. Go now.

So, I just so happened to open the back door, and then the smoke just filled the home.

William Brangham:

The family narrowly escaped, but they lost everything, their once proud, family home now nothing more than these columns.

The Jacintos are one of more than 7,000 Maui residents who have been forced into temporary housing. They now live in a hotel provided by the Red Cross.

Edith Jacinto:

My dad couldn't quite understand. He kept asking: "When are we going home?"

My mom, she's always had bouts of insomnia, but its more so now. Like, she would scream in the middle of the night.

William Brangham:

For so many others on Maui, their nightmare began just after midnight on August 8, when the first fires were reported in the central part of the island. The flames soon grew, devouring homes, business, and priceless native Hawaiian treasures.

In the weeks since, rescue teams have delicately combed through ash and rubble, searching for human remains. Officials say 97 people died, but another 20 or more are still missing.

In all, more than 2,000 structures were destroyed. Yesterday, the first group of residents was allowed back into their neighborhood to see what's left of their homes.

Richard Bissen, Mayor of Maui County, Hawaii: Some have lost everything. Some have lost loved ones. Some — no one was spared. Everyone has some loss.

William Brangham:

Richard Bissen is the mayor of Maui County.

Richard Bissen:

Amazingly, this event has brought us closer — closer together. And that's because this community is a resilient community. No one was prepared for something like this to happen. But we're learning and we're sticking together.

William Brangham:

But the mayor, who has been in office less than a year, has also faced criticism for how the county initially responded to the fires and for a lack of transparency in the weeks since.

Obviously, people trusting you and believing what you say and how you are leading is critical. Do you feel that you have regained the public's trust?

Richard Bissen:

I, first of all, accept all the criticism. You know, I wish I knew how to do all this stuff before I came mayor. There's no shortage of investigations about what happened here.

We never want this to happen again. We want to do everything we can to not just restore trust, but to prevent something like this from happening.

William Brangham:

There are many factors that contributed to the extent of this tragedy. The local utility acknowledged downed power lines triggered an initial blaze.

And since parts of Maui were experiencing a severe drought, the hillsides around Lahaina were thick with dry grasses. High winds from a nearby hurricane then blew this into a violent, fast-moving fire. The one paved road out of town was clogged with traffic. And there was no clear early warning to evacuate.

Aaron Kamaunu, Maui Resident:

So, I'm listening to the news, and still nothing. I don't see no cops. I hear no sirens.

William Brangham:

Aaron Kamaunu lived on Maui for over 50 years. He says he had no idea just how dangerous the situation had become, that is, until the flames were less than a mile away from where he was living with his wife and a 99-year-old man he was caring for.

Aaron Kamaunu:

The neighbors, right, they are coming back and reporting to us, say, hey, the fire is getting close. And I said, no way. I just left the area, can't be that fast. Well, guess what? That puppy was a block away.

William Brangham:

It had gone from a mile to a block away.

Aaron Kamaunu:

In minutes, in minutes, minutes, minutes, minutes. It was, like, unreal, unbelievable.

William Brangham:

Aaron said the winds that day were the strongest he'd ever seen. He captured this footage on his cell phone.

His home was destroyed, but he escaped and now lives on Hawaii's Big Island with the family of the man he cares for. But Aaron's good friend and former neighbor, 80-year-old Freeman Tam Lung, a man he affectionately called Uncle Freeman, did not make it out of Lahaina.

Aaron Kamaunu:

Well, I give him a call. And I said: "Uncle Freeman."

He says:

"Yes, hello. How's it going, Aaron?"

I said: "I'm doing OK. How are you?"

He starts laughing. And then, all of a sudden, click, phone's dead. That was it. That's the last thing I heard, him laughing.

William Brangham:

Those who survive, they are now trying to figure out the future and how to rebuild their lives. Many are relying on help from their fellow Hawaiians. Donations have poured into centers like this one in nearby Napili.

Kaipo Kekona, Napili Noho:

We knew what people would be experiencing. We had no idea of the magnitude of it.

William Brangham:

Kaipo Kekona has helped run this center since the fires were extinguished. They serve hundreds of families a day with free groceries, clothes, household supplies, and a sense of community.

Kaipo Kekona:

We tried to develop our site to be a reflection of our island values. And we just try to orientate all our operations to keep families involved, so that it just keeps our community really tight and in good mind-set, so that we can stick together moving forward.

William Brangham:

The Jacinto family says they hope to one day rebuild their home in Lahaina; 83-year-old Victoria says she can still vividly remember what it was like.

Victoria Jacinto, Fire Victim:

I close my eyes, and I'm there cooking, cleaning, but no more.

William Brangham:

What you see behind me is what is remaining of one neighborhood in Lahaina. So, all of those white concrete foundations are all that is left.

And if you extrapolate out from that, that is thousands of people in this community that are dealing with the loss of their neighborhoods, as well as a very uncertain future — Amna.

Amna Nawaz:

It's remarkable to see seven weeks later.

But, William, let me ask you about something we have heard from the mayor, which is that there's no shortage of investigations into the start of the fires, into why they were so bad. What do we know about the status of those investigations?

William Brangham:

The Hawaii attorney general has deputized a nonprofit fire safety organization to try to get to the bottom of some of those questions.

And so they will be looking at how this fire started, why it got so bad, building a whole timeline of what each of the local officials and how they responded. So, that is police, fire, EMTs, and emergency managers. We will get the sense from that investigation sometime soon.

There's also this overarching question that we heard from a lot of people, which is, why didn't they signal to evacuate? And there are emergency beacons all over this area. And they did not go after in the fire.

And I talked with the head of the county's emergency operations here, and he said those are tsunami beacons. And people are conditioned that, if those go off, that they're supposed to head uphill, which is exactly what they didn't want people doing in this fire. So, that's why they did not go after in the fire.

Amna Nawaz:

William, what about the role of the electrical utility? I know you have reported that they did acknowledge that their downed lines were responsible for one initial blaze. What else do we know about it, whether they played a larger role?

William Brangham:

There's about a dozen different lawsuits against Hawaii Electric Company, including the county of Maui is one of the people suing them.

And all of those lawsuits are alleging, one way or another that the utility did a poor job over the years of strengthening their utility poles, trying to make them resistant enough so that, when winds swept through here, that those poles did not come down and those lines did not come down.

So we don't know what's going to happen with those lawsuits. We do know that the CEO of that utility will be testifying before Congress later this week. In a statement that they sent to the "NewsHour" on this front, they argue that, over the years, they have spent millions of dollars doing those exact things that people allege they should have been doing more of, and that this is, in essence, trying to find blame where it does not exist.

Amna Nawaz:

Finally, William, we heard from some of the many folks you have been talking to down on the ground there. They have been through the unimaginable.

But what else are you hearing from people about how they're coping?

William Brangham:

We have seen an incredible, resilient spirit coming up here.

I mean, as it happens with every disaster, aid comes in from all over the country and all over the world. But one of the other things that we have seen here that has been very powerful is local people stepping up to help each other, Hawaiians helping Hawaiians. And several people that we have talked to said that that process of people who are themselves going through a traumatic experience, reaching out, stepping up to help others, has, in and of itself, been therapeutic for them.

And so it's been a very, very beautiful and powerful thing for us to witness that.

Amna Nawaz:

A recovery still a long way from over.

That is William Brangham reporting for us from Maui.

William, thank you.

William Brangham:

Thanks, Amna.