As firefighters raced to hold back wind-whipped flames, they faced near-death escapes, blinding smoke, car-melting heat — and a battle they couldn’t win.
LAHAINA, Hawaii — Aina Kohler woke before dawn on Aug. 8 and thought she saw a flying saucer hovering outside her window.
The brush fire was in a sloping field along Lahainaluna Road. She saw that the prior crew had gotten most of it out, leaving some spots of smoldering grass and smoke. The incoming firefighters picked up where the others left off, dousing the field with water and turning over dirt. “We walked the perimeter. We walked the inside, and everything looked completely contained and cool,” Kohler said.
But Kohler could not have imagined any of that when the firefighters got the call to return to the field on Lahainaluna Road. She was just surprised. They found a brush fire covering an area of about 20 feet by 100 feet and spreading quickly, Blackburn said.Other crews — including Kohler’s — arrived soon after.
They decided to retreat, but the street was jammed with people in cars trying to flee. “We were blocked in and we were trying to get residents to move out of the way to safety, but it was gridlock,” Fujita, 52, recalled. “There was no way to move their vehicles and no way to move our engine.” Another 15 or so minutes went by. A captain on one of the two remaining crews passed out, severely burning his legs on the pavement. Then a police SUV pulled up, Fujita said. A firefighter had dashed from the scene and drove back in the car.“We just needed to get clear of the smoke and fire as quickly as we could to get medical attention for the captain,” Fujita said.
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