Thursday marks six months since wildfires destroyed Lahaina, killing at least 100 people and displacing thousands.
Resident Etina Hingano was at home on the afternoon of Aug. 8, 2023. The noise of the wind-fueled fire approaching her apartment near Front Street was unlike anything she had heard before.
"It was so loud and echoing throughout the whole Front Street area," she said. "I went outside and we looked up at Lahainaluna and all I saw was almost like a sideways tornado, sort of because it just kept rolling and the sound was coming from it as it continued to roll."
Bringing an 80-year-old neighbor with her, Hingano fled toward the ocean to escape the flames. She said she waited in the water for nine hours before she was rescued by the Maui Fire Department.
Her neighbor, Freeman Tam Lung, did not survive.
Ever since the Maui wildfires destroyed her home, she and her husband have been living at the Royal Lahaina Resort — also her husband's workplace. They've been waiting for a rental to open up.
ETINA HINGANO: It was something different. It's the kind of wind and the sound of it that's, I've never heard before. That's what brought us all outside because I know the hurricane winds started at 5 a.m. And I was on Front Street working at 4:30 in the morning, cleaning Front Street when that wind just shut down the electricity. And it scared me because branches were breaking off and they were just flying in the air. And that's how strong that wind was. But that died out at 2 p.m. And then I woke up my husband, he went to work at 3:05 p.m. I went back inside just to read a book. And it was the "ʻŌlelo Noʻeau," you know, I worked for Lahaina Restoration Foundation. So I was trying to get into all the Hawaiian sayings and all of this stuff and I had just bought the book. And all of a sudden I heard this like wooo-wooo-wooo-wooo. And I was like what the heck is that? And so, and it was so loud and echoing throughout the whole Front Street area. And I was like, you know, maybe the Hawaiians are doing a chant or some kind of, you know, dance or something. And so I went outside and, and we looked up at Lahainaluna and all I saw was almost like a sideways tornado, sort of, because it just kept rolling and the sound was coming from it as it continued to roll. And all of a sudden, we watched that wind just come down and we saw everything just bend the trees, it was just like, it was crazy. And then it came back up. It started the same thing. You could hear that sound, and that sound would come down again. And then as it came down the second time, you could hear like the pop, pop, pop, pop. We're like, oh, something's exploding or popping. And then the third time, it went up again. And then as it came down, black smoke came with it. I yelled and said everybody go inside. Well we ran in, closed the windows, closed the doors. And as that passed on, we came outside, we could see like, there was like black ash on top the railings and everything because I was on the second floor. And then all of a sudden, the wind kind of turned, it picked up the fire and then it came back down. And as the fires was, I think the oxygen fed it, because it was yellow and it turned red. And when it came down, it was less than 15 minutes. It was random, the wind just coming then we saw houses on fire. Then all of a sudden the fire was hitting apartments, the Lahaina Inn Hotel and we could see the hotel went down in less than four minutes. And it was, it was so crazy. And we're just standing there watching. And then the embers started falling and they started falling on a roof. You could hear like [tapping noises on the mic] and I was like what is that? It was the embers falling on the rooftop. And I was like, why does it sound like rocks falling on it? And I told everybody, "We gotta run, we gotta leave, we gotta go." And so I had two bags already set. It's my emergency bag. And I opened my safe, I took out the first two folders and I didn't know what was in there, but I do know that it was in alignment with what was most important, next importance. And in the process of taking it out, I forgot my tax papers and only brought the two with documents and everything in it. And that was saved. My bag with my clothes and water and everything, that went. But my neighbor downstairs, an 80-year-old, he didn't want to go. But I told him we have to go. And I thought that he would survive it, but I remember what he said to me at the apartment was: "I was born in Lahaina. I grew up in Lahaina, I'm gonna die in Lahaina." And he was 80 years old and that's what he wanted. He said he'll just go back in. I said, "I cannot leave without you." And I say, "If you stay, I'll stay." So he said, "We will go." By the time we got over the seawall, it was about 4 p.m., maybe 4:15 p.m. And we walked, some ladies came and took us part of the way and I remember that we kind of walked a little bit and almost was right across from Bubba Gump's. And as I saw that, I knew my focus was to get over the seawall, and, you know, I think I know that if we had gotten further down the seawall, he would have survived. But I think one of the things that I realized was, there was only one stone high enough that he could go down and I could get him down safely because we were the first ones there.
CATHERINE CRUZ, HOST: And what was his name?
HINGANO: His name was, we call him Freeman Tam Lung. His father was the last cook at the Wo Hing Society Museum. He was the last cook, so he had a lot of history there. You know, his mom was Hawaiian, his father was Chinese. So I brought him down, but he told me he said, "I want to see Lahaina one last time." And I know that the reason why we couldn't move him any further was because he has gout. He's 80 years old. He's like 6-foot-4. He's a very dear friend of mine.
CRUZ: And so you survived by getting in the water?
HINGANO: I was in the water. The thing was, one of my other mates from our apartment, she came with me. She also like me had shorts on. I remember I told her, "Get in the water, get in the water," because her skin, you know, I wanted to make sure that she was safe. I said, "Make sure you're covered with water," because the embers were so hot. It burned me right here. That's a scar from that.
CRUZ: That's near your eye. Oh my goodness.
HINGANO: I thought I was gonna lose my eye because I could feel the burn and my eye was like, I swiped that away and I felt the sting, and I was like, oh. And one of the things I remembered in Boy Scouts was making sure that if you're in a fire situation: wet anything, either put it over you or put it over your face to protect you. And that's what I told everybody, I yelled at whoever heard me. I said, "Wet your shirts, put it over your nose and mouth, whatever you have to protect you." I remember when I first got there because we were the only ones there. I told him [Freeman Tam Lung] to stay put, running to knock on windows and telling everybody to come. And I remember when he kind of slided back up, the truck behind him exploded and the fumes overtook him.
CRUZ: How long were you in the water before someone came to help you?
HINGANO: We were there from 4 p.m. until 1:30 in the morning. Nobody knew that any of us had survived. I don't think so. But I remembered that they said that there was a 911 call and they had rescued 16 people that I heard them as they radioed back and forth. And I remember one of the guys and he later on passed, but he never put anything on his face. And he was such a young hero. He was a haole guy just walking. He came to check on Freeman and he said that he had passed. I said yeah. I went to Freeman and I just talked to him and I said, "Boy, you stubborn as usual." I said, "You coulda survived with me but you decided to climb back up the rocks and see Lahaina one last time." I said, "But I want to thank you because I feel like miracles happened that day." And, you know, there were times when I felt like he was there telling me to just hold on.
CRUZ: The Coast Guard came?
HINGANO: The Coast Guard came and rescued the people outside the, outside of the reef. They couldn't come in. They couldn't come in from the reef. And they tried and tried and tried. And finally, the fire department was able to come through and they took us, the first I know was 24 or 26 people. Yeah, they came to rescue us at about 1:30 in the morning. 26 people. We were the second batch. There was like 16 of us. And I remember inside the truck, there was like the driver and somebody else, another person, and in the back there was five of us and then in the back back, there was like all these people in the back, just jammed in there. They were trying to get us out of there before the fire. And I remember thinking, oh, all these houses are safe. Nothing is on fire and stuff like that. But apparently later on, the fire kept going. And all those houses ended up burning down. So that's a miracle in itself, you know, that they were able to come and get us because I think there was at one point when they went, right before they came, my throat was so dry. And I said, "Does anybody have water?" And I don't blame the little kids. You know, they said their parents were working, but they were there. They had water, but they had their animals too. They had three of their dogs with them. So I don't blame them that they didn't share, but they were looking at me and they were looking at the dogs and I just and I knew that probably that was for the animals. Yeah. And that was the last of it. And then the two people next to me, what is their name? They're taxi drivers, you know, and she had about maybe this much, about this much water in her bottle. And I said, "OK, can I have a little sip?" So I took a tiny little sip just to wet my throat because I felt like I couldn't breathe anymore. And then I called Annelise and I said, "Annelise, would you like a sip?" And she took a tiny little sip. And when they gave it back to her, she gave it to her husband and told him to finish it. And right after that, it was like, the fire department showed up, I think like maybe half an hour after that. And from there, we were saved. And I remember right when we got in, somebody said, "Boy, there's so much stuff on the floor." And then she picked up the water. And I remember all of us in the front of the truck, we all took a sip of the water. And it was like at that moment, nobody cared. You know, everybody just wanted water.
This story aired on The Conversation on Feb. 7, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1. This interview was adapted for the web by Sophia McCullough.
