‘No safe place’: Utahn says Hawaii relatives rushed to escape deadly Maui fire with no warning

Utahn Ashleen Tevaga said her family in Hawaii only had time to grab their children and dogs and run from the Lahaina wildfire with the clothes they had on.

They all made it out of the historic coastal town in west Maui that was reduced to ashes after last week’s fire, but there were multiple close calls, Tevaga said. At one point, they thought they had escaped, but then the fire came again. Her sister-in-law had to evacuate four times, Tevaga said.

At about 2 a.m. in Utah on Wednesday, Tevaga got a text from her sister on the island. “Is everybody OK?” Tevaga asked. Her sister replied, “No. Lahaina’s gone.”

As of Monday, the death toll from the Lahaina fire, which started Aug. 8, had risen to 96, according to The Associated Press, and authorities said the effort to locate and identify the dead was still in its early stages. The blaze is the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, the AP reported, surpassing the Camp Fire that razed Paradise, California, and killed 85 in 2018.

“Since this started, our whole home has been consumed with finding our family members, our brothers, our childhood best friends, our cousins, aunties, uncles,” Tevaga said. “We’re all just trying to come together now to deal with what is left, which is really nothing.”

‘There’s fires everywhere’

Tevaga was born on Oahu but has spent most of her life on Maui, she said. She and her husband, Martin Tevaga, moved from Maui to Utah three years ago this month, and they now live in Herriman with their six children.

For their many family members in Hawaii, there was no warning that the fire was coming, she said, “just a huge rush of getting out of the house.”

Ashleen Tevaga’s family has also been affected by fires in south Maui’s Kihei area and in the centrally located Upcountry. No fatalities have been reported from those blazes.

The AP reported that wildfires raced across Maui in dry brush, fueled by strong winds from a hurricane passing Hawaii to the south.

“It was so chaotic at one point because every single family member was evacuating from a different part of the island, but nobody knew where to go,” Tevaga said.

The night Tevaga heard from her sister that Lahaina had been destroyed, she called her mother-in-law, who said, “There’s fires everywhere on the island. We don’t know where to evacuate to. There’s no safe place.”

Tevaga said that her husband’s family members that live in Lahaina or close by have lost everything, including multiple homes and businesses. She said at least five households have been displaced, including several children.

Now, those family members have found shelter with aunts and friends. As of Monday, all family members had been accounted for, she said.

‘Maui is a special place’

On Sunday, Tevaga was busy gathering supplies to send to Maui, where store shelves have been cleared out. She said she’s been collecting essentials like period products, hair care items, oral hygiene items, lip balm and more, as well as items for babies and children like diapers, coloring books, blankets, toys and crayons.

“The lack of help from the outside is so severe that everybody has become dependent on each other,” Tevaga said. “... We’re so proud of how everybody is dealing with this. In order to keep everything going and to keep the community strong and the children happy and safe, they’re all just sticking together, to help with the healing process.”

Tevaga tried to get her mother to leave Maui and come to Utah, but she refused as the crisis continues to unfold.

“Maui is a special place,” Tevaga said. “It’s hard to get anybody off of that island.”

As the original capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Lahaina is a special paradise for Native Hawaiians that’s rich in culture and history, Tevaga said. “It’s so tucked away, it’s a safe place. ... I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s a different feeling. ”

Just before she and her husband left Maui to move to Utah, “we took our last drive in Lahaina and then we just sat at the top of the road, and my husband and I, we just cried leaving that place,” Tevaga said, her voice filling with emotion. “Because it’s such a sanctuary. ... The people are beautiful, the community’s beautiful.”

“Lahaina was my favorite, favorite, favorite place to live,” she continued.

— People trying to locate loved ones who may be impacted by the fires on Maui can call the American Red Cross hotline at 1-800-733-2767. Those who would like to help get resources to the people of Maui can donate to the Maui Strong Fund, set up by the Hawai’i Community Foundation.

— The Associated Press contributed to this story.