PORTLAND, Ore. — A Portland couple can count themselves among the lucky ones who escaped just as flames tore through the city of Lahaina on Maui last week. They told The Story's Pat Dooris that at first it wasn't obvious there was a problem, and throughout the ordeal many people seemed unaware of the danger that roared toward the town.
Caroline Reay and her husband, Gerry Williams, flew from Portland to Hawaii early this month. They were celebrating 29 years of marriage and Reay's retirement from her job as a physician.
The couple spent eight lovely days enjoying the island of Maui and the town of Wailea on the southwest coast. Then they drove north and west, up to Lahaina.
They arrived in Lahaina around 2:30 p.m. on August 8, checking in at the historic Pioneer Inn. The hotel has been there for more than 100 years, right across the street from the famous banyan tree that shades an entire park near the town's busy little harbor.
Reay and Williams marveled at the surprisingly strong winds. Still, they thought it was just a passing storm.
An hour later, around 3:30 p.m., they were growing concerned. They also started documenting the evolving situation with their cell phones.
"We kept hearing explosions, we saw the smoke get closer," Reay recalled. "And that was about 15 minutes later we thought, 'We've gotta check out where this is.' So about 4 o'clock we walked over. It was about four blocks away."
The howling wind had rekindled a fire from earlier in the day. Now it was blowing straight downhill, into the town of Lahaina. Soon the black clouds of billowing smoke warned that the fire was just blocks away.
"And so at that point we turned around and said, 'We gotta get out of here,'" Reay said.
But in Lahaina, getting out was no easy task. Honoapiilani Highway, also called Highway 30, runs through town and parallels the coast line. Inland from that is the Lahaina Bypass. The two routes are just about the only ways out of town, and few roads connect them. With thousands of people trying to escape the coming fire, there were massive traffic jams.
"As an engineer I look at it and think, you could just see how this was gonna happen," Williams said. "If you have very few roadways in and out and places where people can get off and take alternate routes … I mean, like, around here if 18th is blocked you can get on Madison and up to 19th or 20th or whatever. And there all the roads that were off the main roadway were dead ends."
Reay and Williams were in the middle of it as the fire began to take over the city.
"It was ... it was just insanity," Reay said. "At one point, on the other side of the roadway, a fire vehicle was moving along and a young man was being — a firefighter was being dragged along on the outside. And two blocks down they stopped and they were doing CPR on him.
"I mean it was complete chaos. The wind was blowing, the smoke was billowing, people were beginning to honk and go crazy and a couple women were starting to jump line and go into the oncoming lanes. They said, you know, 'This is disorganized. We gotta get outta here.'"
Because they left when they did, Reay and Williams were able to get to safety eventually. But they know that it was a terrifyingly close call.
"I mean, we were like 30 minutes, 20 minutes away from being those people jumping into the water, and ... when you look back it's just really scary."
The fire all but leveled Lahaina, right up to the harbor. As of Wednesday afternoon, officials said that over 100 people were confirmed dead, with searches ongoing.
Lahaina's famous banyan tree still stands, but it's brown and scorched amid a field of rubble. An expert who inspected the 150-year-old tree said it's too soon to tell if it will survive. Arborist Steve Nimz said there is live tissue beneath the bark, and the tree is in something like a coma.
The devastation around the tree shows the fire's wrath. Across the street, there's almost nothing left of the Pioneer Inn.