Search and rescue teams still won’t be able to reach certain areas until the fire lines are secure and access is safe, Weintraub added.
The flames left some people with mere minutes to act and led some to flee into the ocean. A Lahaina man, Bosco Bae, posted a video on Facebook from Tuesday night that showed the fire burning nearly every building on a street as sirens blared and windblown sparks raced by. Bae, who said he was one of the last people to leave the town, was evacuated to the island’s main airport and was waiting to be allowed to return home.
Marlon Vasquez, a 31-year-old cook from Guatemala who came to the US in January 2022, said that when he heard the fire alarms, it was already too late to flee in his car.
“I opened the door, and the fire was almost on top of us,” he said from an evacuation centre at a gymnasium. “We ran and ran. We ran almost the…
