KIHEI, Hawaii — Sanford Hill calls his escape from death “dumb luck.”
He sits in temporary housing on the other side of Maui from his senior living facility in Lahaina. It was destroyed in the wildfire, and Hill is struggling to process how he made it — and wondering how many of his neighbors, all 62 or older, also got out.
There are no answers.
“There is no way for us to find out who survived,” Hill, 72, told NBC News.
More than a week after wildfires tore through western Maui, authorities have publicly identified just two victims, and say they’ve recovered 106 human remains in the charred fire zone that have yet to be identified. That number could double, officials say.
Aug. 15, 202303:45
Hill knows of just three former neighbors who escaped, and some of those neighbors have heard from a handful of others. But that’s it. He has called the company that owned the 34-unit reduced-rent building, Hale Mahaolu Eono, but staff told him they don’t have any information, he said.
Relatives of missing Hale Mahaolu Eono residents say they’ve also been unable to get help from the company, Hale Mahaolu.
Company officials did not immediately return messages from NBC News seeking comment.
“That’s just hard to talk about, because I don’t really know who’s gone,” Hill said. “I haven’t wrapped my head around that yet.”
Like thousands of other residents of Lahaina, Hill and many of his neighbors at Hale Mahaolu Eono stayed home for the first half of Aug. 8, watching firefighters trying to extinguish a fire to the east of town. He said he received an alert about the fire on his phone but there was no urgency to it. A building manager went around telling tenants they may have to evacuate. But word went around later that the fire had been contained, and the firefighters left.
Hill went to a dentist appointment.
“I wasn’t worried about it, nobody else was,” Hill recalled. ”Everybody else was home. Nobody evacuated. Nobody left.”
Then the fire outside town reignited and was moving fast, fed by whipping winds. Driving back from his appointment, Hill said he saw black smoke billowing toward Lahaina from the east, where police had blocked off Lahaina Bypass.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
