How A Paradise Became A Death Trap: An Update

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It's Tuesday, December 26th.

And so, I think it was around noon or one, one of my neighbors came and knocked on my door and he said, hey, you need to come out and see this. So, I came out, and in front of my house, you know, I have a little cottage. Behind my house, I could see a lot of smoke. So, I called my cat, I had an outdoor cat, and I called her, and I couldn't find her all day, and then I just gave up, and I closed my door.

And then, my neighbor came back, maybe an hour later, and he said, there's another fire.

And it was closer. It was actually the street behind us. And I have a scooter, so I actually went to go check out how close the fire was. And I got on Front Street, which is a street that goes along, you know, the ocean, and I see there's this restaurant up in flames.

And I saw people running, and straight in front of me, there's a medical center. And I remember actually seeing a lot of people trying to get in the medical center. Then behind me, there's a whole business on fire. It's like, holy, like, everything was on fire. Like, I didn't understand how things started to catch on fire.

It didn't make sense. And now, I started to panic. So, I went back to the neighbors, but the neighbors were all gone.

And I felt kind of lost. And the wind, you know, there was wind, and there was trees falling down. And I screamed for my cat, and I saw her run under the house, and she didn't want to come out. You know, so I was panicking. You know, reality started to set in.

And so, I said, okay, maybe, you know, the safest place to be right now is here, because I wouldn't even know where to go. And so, I'm closing the door. And about five minutes, everything turned black outside.

And a medical center across the street was up in flames to the sky. Oh, my God. And I couldn't understand. I said, how? Like, I just felt people, like, it was, there was nothing, like, five, ten minutes ago.

And it really looked like someone put gasoline all over the building, and it, just, like, took up in flames. It didn't make sense how, like, a stone, building could burn so fast. And so, I opened the door, still calling my cat, and I felt something burning on my shoulder, and it was debris, like, amber. And I look up in the sky, and it's literally fire coming down the sky. It was raining fire.

And now, I said, I have to get out of here. And so, you know, I got everything I could, you know, all the necessities, clothes, and wallet, and, you know, pictures, or whatever, and put everything in two big bags, and I ran out of the house. And as I ran out of the house, there was smoke everywhere. And I saw one of my neighbors coughing. He was right in front of the house, and he was just coughing.

And I said, what are you doing here? He's like, oh, I went to the store, and I said, okay, let's get on my scooter. So, he came behind me on my scooter, and the fire came from uphill. It was coming down. So, to me, the safest place that this fire is water.

And so, you know, in the panic, I said, we have to go to the harbor. And then, we got on Front Street.

And on Front Street, I was just chaos. I could hear, you know, screams. I can see people, but I could hear them scream. Scary screams. Screams of pain.

I've never heard before. There were clearly people burning alive. Like, it was a deep pain, you know, and people throwing up. And it was just, it was horrifying. It was horrifying to hear that.

I'm so glad I couldn't see. It was black because there was so much smoke, but we could clearly hear them all around us. All around us. It felt like we were in hell.

And so, we finally got to the harbor, and I left my scooter there. And at the edge of the water, on the harbor, there's a little house. It's called the Harbor Masters House. So, we had our back against the wall, and we were facing the ocean. And we're just waiting.

We just didn't know what to do.

But a couple minutes waiting there, I saw a shadow just run and jump in the water on the side of the house. And I said, Damon, do you see this? And we looked in the water. The big pit bulls were drowning in front of us. You know, he had the big head and yellow eyes.

And I wanted to help him, but I didn't know if he was going to bite me or pull me with him in the water. So, I kept calling him and calling him, but he couldn't do it. He tried his best to do it, but he couldn't do it. And I'll never forget the look he gave me in his eyes. He just gave up, and his head went underwater.

And I told Damon to hold my feet, and I took my shirt off. And somehow, I managed to grab him by the collar and pull him out. And we tried to calm him down. He was just walking in circles. He was in panic mode.

And then I called the police. And I said, hey, we're on the harbor. We're stuck. You guys have to come get us. And the lady was just, she didn't know what to say.

She said, I'm sorry. We can't come get you. Everything was in flames, and they were overwhelmed. I hung up. And I just remember seeing debris falling from the sky, and our bags kept catching on fire.

Miraculously, I saw on my phone, I had one bar of service. So, I tried to call my best friend, Yasim. And I told my best friend, hey, I love you. Tell everybody I love them. It's going to be okay.

You know, here's my mom's number. Don't call her now. Wait. You know, let her sleep.

And after I hung up with him, I called the police again. And she gave me the same answer. She said, I'm so sorry. And, you know, I could feel the frustration in her voice. She was just helpless.

She didn't know. And I felt so bad for her because she probably had so many calls like this. And so, I hung up again, and I was just frustrated.

So, at this point, I thought maybe I could get in the harbor master's house, the little house. Damon had a knife with him, and he cut the screen off. And I started punching the window with all my strength, all my strength. And so, I fractured my hand. The window was so thick, it wouldn't even do anything.

And so, I called the police a third time. And I said, if you guys don't come right now, we're going to die. And she said, you guys have to jump in the water.

And I said, no way. Who wants to jump in a hurricane at night, like, with all this smoke? Like, there's no way we can jump. The water was crazy. And she said, you have no choice.

You have to jump in the water. And I hung up, and I looked at Damon. I was like, we have to jump. And Damon said, there's no way I'm jumping. I'm not jumping.

And I told him, listen, either we burn or we drown.

And, you know, I waited a couple more minutes. I tried to convince him. And I said, you know, I'm jumping. There were rocks maybe 100 feet away or 150 feet.

And I finally made it. And I looked back, and I screamed at Damon. And he was just terrified. He was not, you know, he was next to the dog. And I told him, jump.

And I kept screaming. And he just didn't want to. And I could see him hanging on to the harbor with half his body in the water. And I kept screaming, you need to let go. You need to let go.

And he screamed, my shoes are too heavy. And so I just made the decision to jump and go get him. So I got back in the water.

And I got back next to him. I tried to go and take his shoes off, but I couldn't even find his feet. The ocean was just pushing me against the wall. And I told him, you have to follow me.

And, you know, we still had debris falling on us and we had waves just coming over us. We were holding on to the rocks to not like get pulled or sucked in by the ocean. It was just a nightmare. And then I heard the dog screaming. So I was like, I have to go back.

And I jumped back in the water. You know, I tried to get back on the harbor. He was laying against the wall. His eyes closed. And he was screaming.

There's no way I could carry him. It was a big pit bull and I had one, you know, my hand was fractured or broken. So I thought, if I, if I try to grab him in the water, he's already freaked out. We're both going to drown. You know, he's going to die for sure.

And I'm probably not going to make it. So one of my bags, I had a blanket and I dipped it in the ocean five or six times. And I put it on top of the dog. That's all I could do.

And I took one of my bags and I jumped back in the ocean.

And then I almost drowned.

I was just so exhausted and I panicked halfway. And I was praying to God, please help me.

And, and I thank God, I made it to the jetty and I went back on the other side.

And I talked to Damon and he was not answering. And I grabbed his hand and he just held my hand. He was just in shock.

And then, maybe an hour after that, I saw light, you know, far away. And I told Damon, I said, hey, I think there's a boat over there. And we're like screaming. I was screaming at the top of my lungs. And they were like coming towards us, like, thank God.

And it was the Coast Guard. And they were like, we can't get close. You guys have to jump in the water. You know, because it was so rough. They were crashing the rocks.

And I jumped first. And they got me in. I just laid down on my back. And I could just see amber just falling on us. Like the sky had no stars.

The amber was the stars. Red stars in the sky. That's what it looked like. Just a black sky with red stars just falling down.

I was floating on the ocean, but I felt like I was floating in space. I was thanking God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I don't deserve this. I really just, it was just unbelievable that we made it. And, Damon, he managed to make it. And I was like, thank God we made it.

And I said, oh, how did you guys find us? And they said, we got a call that someone might be on the harbor. So I think that lady, you know, she relayed the call and finally got to us. And I said, thank God, we made it. And he said, oh, no, not yet.

We still have to go through the storm. And I said, where are we going? And he said, we don't know. Everything's on fire.

And I looked behind me and there was just, it was just, it looked like war. It was just flames up to the sky. The whole, I mean, the whole town. In the darkness.

So we got to Maui High School. They made a shelter there. And then, when we arrived, of course, we were like covering in suits and all black. So everyone was looking at us. And I was barefoot, but people kept staring at my feet.

Everybody knew, you know, we're the ones who survived. You know, everybody that was in the shelter were the lucky ones.

You know, I'm at a hotel and no one knows what's next, actually.

Have you been moved from hotel to hotel since we talked?

And it's pretty hard to live in a hotel room for that long. You know, eating McDonald's every day. Not the most, not the best lifestyle.

And also, like, if you leave your hotel room for more than two or three days, then you lose that room. You know, so you can't even go and visit family. You can't do anything. It really feels like we're in jail.

And you're like, you know, you don't have a car. And, you know, it's kind of hard to just go to the beach by yourself.

But it's kind of like attending a funeral and you're having a party next door. It's like you're walking and everyone's happy and everyone's drinking, and, you know, and music. And you're just there and you feel like a ghost.

Like not really in the mood.

So it's a weird feeling.

It's going to be a long time before the Hainan gets back to how it was. It's never going to be how it was.

So I don't know if my cat was that fortunate. But people are telling me not to lose hope.

So it's hard for me to like think of a better situation than I had before, you know.

But I think my hope would be, you know, to get my, you know, to get my, you know, place and then hopefully find my cat and then start moving on from there. It's just, it's kind of hard right now to imagine about anything.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.