Maui residents take stock of wildfire tragedy

victims are facing obstacles getting back in their neighborhoods to see what's left. Reporter Gina Silva joining us now live from the island this hour. After speaking with victims, struggled to recover, Gina. Well I can show you right here, this is what you're going to see on the way to Lahaina, the two roads, police checkpoints and the officers are here to make sure that people don't get back into town. It is making residents and tourists extremely frustrated. I was here for six hours in line. We've been waiting for the road to open up since 4:00 yesterday afternoon. My house ended up burning, so I am so sorry. Yeah. So I'm going back to try and see with road closures and police turning people away, it's been nearly impossible to get back to the town of Lahaina just saddened by this this roadblock all day, all that we hear is roads closed. They don't tell us when will they let us go. Ali and his wife, Miriam, have been trying to go back home to Virginia after their dream vacation was ruined. Their rented condo in Lahaina survived the fire, but authorities won't let them retrieve their belongings. They have no travel documents, are there? My wife's credit cards. They're our passports and green card are there. I lost my place. My place burned down to the ground. Despite his loss, Ikaika Simeon is thankful to be alive. When I was in a car, you can actually hear like, propane tank gas station just going off. These are some of the cell phone videos. Ikaika captured on his way out of town. On the other side of the island. I started panicking and texted him just constantly. Maria Milan Ichigo's girlfriend was worried sick because she couldn't get a hold of him. Alerts kept coming in stating that the fire was spreading rapidly. He could not get in touch with him. The entire day passed. No word. I thought he died. I thought he was dead. 89 people are confirmed dead and an estimated 1000 are still missing. Is the total of nine people I am looking for. Jill La Cuesta is looking for these nine people. They have not been seen or heard from since Tuesday. The concern is dispute. So they were looking for Maui officials are using the Kahului Community Center for people to report their missing family and friends. Those who are coming here are going through trauma and experiences that that is unimaginable. And that's why it's so important to have the center up and running days after this inferno took so many lives and destroyed a legendary seaside community. Many locals are expressing anger at how Maui handled this disaster. Having a warning or something like that would have been nice for the whole Lahaina branch, The whole Lahaina community. It would have been nice to have a warning. I woke up at 3:00 and I still didn't hear any sirens and I'm pretty off about that. I feel that our county and state completely failed the line of community fail on an epic level for any families that were at home and had no idea that this was happening. There was no time to escape. Residents say they received no warnings and no evacuation orders until it was too late. This has been the deadliest wildfire in recent history. Reporting from Maui, I'm Gina Silva. I'll send it

Channel: KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco

Views: 409,531

Keywords: lahaina, maui, 89 dead, 1000 more missing, hawaii, wildfire, destroyed, destruction, burning, fire, tragedy, hawaiians

Id: T-2DKN0UeMw

Length: 3min 34sec (214 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 13 2023