‘Lahaina is totally gone’ | Maui evacuee says her home, town have gone up in smoke

By Diane Ako

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    KAHUKUI, Hawaii (KITV) — A longtime Maui resident says fled her Lahaina home and lost everything in the fire.

Phena Davis told KITV4 about what the last 24 hours have been like for her and her family.

“I own nothing. I have the clothes on my back and my car and that is it,” she said from the safety of a family home in Kahana.

It was late afternoon on Tuesday when she realized she needed gather her family of eight and go.

“We decided to evacuate out of Lahaina. My niece, whose dad is a firefighter fighting the Lahaina fires, told us we needed to leave because they’re running out of water,” she said.

“We didn’t get the evacuation alarms until 8 p.m. The fire started at 3:30 p.m. It reached my house, oceanside of Lahaina Front Street, by 5 p.m. There was so much smoke we had to evacuate. By 10 p.m., my house was burnt to the ground along with all of Front Street,” Davis added.

Davis has lived in Lahaina for 20 years and this is the worst disaster she’s seen there.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. There is no Lahaina left. There’s no Lahaina Harbor, no Mala Wharf. Every restaurant is burned. The Jodo Mission and the homes on Front Street are completely burned to the ground,” she said.

With phone and internet lines down, Davis said she’s had to work to assure her loved ones on the mainland she’s OK. She says she “drove this morning all the way up to the top of the coffee farms to get phone service,” but when asked how other people getting word out to their loved ones off Maui, she said, “They’re not.”

She is in shock, and describes a range of emotions in the people around her.

“Some people are emotional, but others are confused. A lot of people don’t know what to do. They needed more direction and people to help them navigate the situation,” Davis said.

Now she’s worried about her friends on the northern end of Lahaina.

“There’s still people there. I’m lucky I had gas. A lot of my friends can’t leave because they don’t have gas. They’re near or in Ka’anapali, which feels safer because the fire department is confident they can hold the fire back to that point,” Davis shared, adding that all she can do now is pray.

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