‘Complete madness’: One Lahaina firefighter’s battle against the Maui wildfires

there's power lines dropping left and right like just going over I was sitting there and I was watching houses roofs just getting torn apart you know piece after peace after peace just flying through the air and like you know kind of just in awe so we're going up the road as we're going these people are yelling us our house is on fire our house is on the fire we're like you gotta get out of here you gotta go you know sometimes when you're in a nightmare you can tell yourself that and then you wake up and you're like yes we're in a nightmare and we weren't in a nightmare it was very real [Music] I've been a firefighter for 13 years seven years in Portland and I wanted to move home before I grew up and we moved back to Maui my husband and I both got hired with the fire department over here and we've been here six years foreign we were sent out to relieve a crew that was on a brush fire that morning that night I'm not sure what time that started but I do know that it was extinguished 100 and we got called up there to change out with them at the location of that brush fire and that was up online on the road so we went out to change out with them and to kind of just keep putting water all over any hot spots any cold spots anywhere where that we just kept dumping more and more water all over the location since we had sat on it for so long it puts you know so much water on it and when we stopped putting water on it and then we sat there for even longer just to see you know and we'd walk the perimeter we'd walk the inside and everything looked completely contained and cool so we went back to the station knowing that nothing flared up in five hours we ate lunch we all got a nice meal in and then that's when the tones went off that there was a brush fire same area and it was probably 20 minutes later everything was out the fire was extinguished and so to hear that we were going back there I was like you've got to be joking we just were sitting there for five hours not putting anything out how could it possibly be that we're going back there that was pretty shocking to be honest I was probably there like a couple minutes and I start hearing this house is on fire we need to make a stand here this house is on fire this house is on fire we start hoses going out and Febreze flying all over the place stuff's flying in the air it's like just complete Madness to be honest and I'm like oh my God so we get there and we get the water supply and the more we're hearing it move we're like okay we're gonna have to move down you know let's go try to make a stance somewhere else and just then it got too hot we're like boom drop the hose lines we gotta go for our own safety we had to evacuate we're like get in the rig we gotta go now I don't know the picture it again how many different spots were firefighters responders here I have no idea we all started at one and then we all were just trying to jump to the next to make a stance at the next you know block or the next location so we're going up the road as we're going these people are yelling us our house is on fire our house is on the fire we're like we have to go this way I'm sorry like it was just devastating it's like we need to make a stand over here if we want to save right now it's just how do we make it so that there's less damage you know so all this whole place doesn't burn there were people just watering their houses down and we're like you got to get out of here you gotta go you know and people are running people are getting out of their cars because there's downed power lines and they can't get down so at this point people are all like scrambling from this neighborhood as any way possible and I know multiple people that were just like screw it they left their cars and ran down the hill so we go by and we go to this other place we're putting water on the fire this had happened at the last place too the host streams were going sideways the wind was so strong we had it directed this way and it was going this way and it was just like uh if we can't get close enough to stop it because we're going to get burned if we can't get water you know I'm not sure what to do it was just bizarre and then my Captain's like we need more pressure we need more pressure and I was like at some point I felt the intake line and I was like yeah there's there's no more pressure this is all the water we have coming in and it's not enough you know so we decided we got to leave we don't have any more water we were very alone we were the only ones in this area right now everyone else was trying to go and stop it from moving further down the hill from what I heard on the radio and every now and then like a big plume of black smoke would come over and we'd have to hide behind the engine or and then when we went into town I looked up and how you could see the house fully involved but you know I already accepted it I think I knew this whole town is going to burn down why not my house you know there's moments in your life when you wish you just go and be the hero that that saves your town you know like what might have went different you know had I gone downhill instead of uphill you know if I wouldn't have went up and got that water supply established that's going to keep going on in my brain forever that's going to go on forever what could I have done different what could I have you know and who knows what the outcome would have been who knows if it would have changed at all who knows you know looking at it and looking where the fire was I was like I don't know that you know I don't know that anything could have been done differently foreign [Music] thanks for watching stay updated about breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or follow us on social media

Channel: NBC News

Views: 78,041

Keywords: NBC News

Id: Zhdi96Rf_jk

Length: 6min 57sec (417 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 19 2023