Hawaii wildfires: ‘Jump in the water during a hurricane, or burn’ – locals say it was a miracle they survived
At Maui High School, class is out and the hallways are instead thronging with people who have evacuated, escaping the worst wildfire to hit the US for years.
The gymnasium has become a shelter, with families huddled in corners under duvets, and camp beds set up where the sports court would usually be.
Behind the building, volunteers serve Hawaiian stew and rice from huge silver trays. Benches are arranged around a big screen showing rolling local news, documenting the rising number of fatalities.
Most of the people here are either tourists or locals from the town of Lahaina, which was obliterated when wildfire ripped through Maui on Tuesday.
Here, trauma interacts with remarkable tales of survival.
Ydriss Nouara and his neighbour Damon McDonough jumped into the ocean to escape the flames which engulfed Lahaina. They spent three hours clinging to a jetty before they were rescued by a coastguard boat.
“It was hell,” says Ydriss. “Hell on earth, truly.”
The pair had both left their homes in the centre of Lahaina when the wildfires which had been visible on the crest of the hill quickly started moving their way, accelerated by the winds from a hurricane 800 miles off the coast.
“It was the afternoon but the skies were black from the smoke,” says Damon. They both headed down to the harbour area of town believing they would be safe there. But soon they were burning hot.
“We kept hearing explosions and screams like we were in a horror movie,” says Ydriss, “We heard people throwing up, we didn’t know where they were. I called the police and they said that they couldn’t get to us.
“The smoke was all black and we called the cops again and they said they couldn’t come and the third time they said you gotta go in the water. And I said ‘you want us to jump in the water in a hurricane? It’s black you know.’
“But we didn’t have a choice,” he adds, “it was either that or burn.”
Pic: AP
Damon, an army veteran who moved to Maui from California, says he believes it was a miracle they survived.
“We would just keep hearing boats exploding and they were on fire and moving towards them as though someone was driving them. I was on my back trying to stay afloat and I was like saying to myself ‘please not today, God, not like this.”
Both Damon and Ydriss lost their homes and belongings to the fire. Most people in the shelters have just a small bag of belongings.
Christina and her family were on holiday at the luxury Pumana resort in Lahaina to celebrate her 10-year-old grandson, John, finishing cancer treatment.
They were evacuated two days ago and have not been allowed back by the authorities to retrieve their suitcases.
Read more:
Images show devastation on island of Maui
Telescope captures deadly Hawaii fires
‘We were totally shocked by what we saw’
“My grandson had a tumour removed from his head and had five weeks of radiation treatment and we came to Hawaii after that,” says Christina.
“Thankfully we were evacuated and brought here,” she adds, tears filling her eyes, “The people are so kind. We have food and water and a place to shower and people who love us. We feel very lucky and very blessed.”
Some tourists chose to go straight to the airport to await flights out of Maui.
Pic: AP
Fires in Lahaina. Pic: AP
The partly covered concourse is peppered with people trying to get some sleep. Brian and his 16-year-old daughter Chiara are from Los Angeles so they are used to wildfires, but have never seen a blaze move so quickly.
“The alarms blared at the hotel, telling us to evacuate,” says Brian. “I had no clue of the devastation really until we hopped on the bus and we saw this carnage with all the homes burned and all the businesses burned down.
“I was just there, a couple of nights ago, picking up some shaved ice for my kids and to see it like that was just terrible.”
“It was like a bomb went off,” says Chiara. “All the cars with full gas tanks exploded when the fires reached them.”
Katy Perry has blasted off to space along with five other women in the first all-female space crew in over sixty years.
The Firework singer lifted off from West Texas on a Blue Origin rocket before becoming the first artist to sing in space.
Flying alongside Perry were author Lauren Sanchez, the fiancee of Blue Origin owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, journalist and TV presenter Gayle King, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and filmmaker Kerianne Flynn.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
What happened in Blue Origin all-female space flight
The star-studded crew were supported on the ground by family and friends including Kris Jenner, Khloe Kardashian and Oprah Winfrey, who said she had “never been more proud” of her friend, King.
“There’s only one time all the women are going up for the first time,” Oprah said she told her friend when urging her to go on the flight, telling her she’d regret turning down the opportunity.
(Seated left to right) Lauren Sanchez and Kerianne Flynn, (standing left to right) Amanda Nguyen, Katy Perry, Gayle King and Aisha Bowe. Pic: Blue Origin
Katy Perry rings a symbolic bell before boarding the New Shepard rocket. Pic: Blue Origin
Weightlessness
The crew were weightless for just four minutes after passing the Karman line, a 62-mile-high boundary that is internationally recognised as the boundary of space.
Pic: Blue Origin
They could be heard screaming as they began to feel weightless, and told each other to look at the incredible views of the moon.
As the crew were leaving space, Perry started to sing What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
‘I feel super-connected to love’
Asked why she chose that song, she said: “It’s not about me or about me singing my songs, it was about a collective energy in there.
“It’s about this wonderful world that we see right out there and appreciating it.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Kardashians share support for all-female crew
She confirmed she will be writing a song about the experience.
Katy Perry kisses the ground after the flight. Pic: Blue Origin
The descent
Three parachutes on their capsule opened up to bring them safely back down to Earth and just before they landed, an air cushion blew a cloud of dust up in the west Texas desert, giving a dramatic-looking touchdown.
Pic: Blue Origin
Pic: Blue Origin
“Excited as I am, I’ll be very glad when we come back down,” said self-confessed nervous flier King before liftoff.
When she exited the shuttle, the presenter kissed the floor and said: “Thank you, Jesus”.
She said it was “oddly quiet” in space, and it reminded her that people needed to “do better and be better” on Earth.
Read more from Sky News:
Sunak’s former aide charged with election betting offences
Aimee Lou Wood hits out at ‘mean and unfunny’ SNL joke
Upstairs, Downstairs actress dies
“It was the most incredible experience of my life to be up there and see such vast darkness in space and look down on our planet,” said Flynn, through tears.
“The moon was so beautiful and I feel like that was a special gift just for me,” she said.
Donald Trump has suggested “homegrown criminals” in the US could be deported to jails in El Salvador – saying the US attorney general is “studying the laws right now”.
He made the comment while speaking alongside the Central American nation’s president, Nayib Bukele, in the White House.
The Trump administration has sent hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to CECOT, a maximum security prison in El Salvador, since March.
When asked about the deportations – which were briefly blocked by a US court last month – Mr Trump said: “I’d like to go a step further.
“We also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, hit elderly ladies on the back of the head when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters.
“I’d like to include them in people to get out of the country.”
Pic: Reuters
When pressed on the matter by a reporter, he replied: “They’re as bad as anybody that comes in. We have bad ones too. I’m all for it.”
US Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was present at the meeting, is “studying the laws right now”, the US president added.
“If we can do that, that’s good,” he said. “I’m talking about violent people, really bad people.
“We can do things with the president [of El Salvador] for less money and have great security. He does a great job with that. We have other we’re negotiating with too.”
Read more:
Singer ‘thrown to the lions’ in El Salvador jail
Smartphones and laptops excluded from US tariffs
The Trump administration has been deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members to the El Salvador jail since mid-March, when the US president signed the Alien Enemies Act.
The law from 1798 has been invoked just three times before, in wartime. It allows the president to detain and deport immigrants living in the US legally if they are from countries seen as “enemies” of the government.
👉 Follow Trump 100 on your podcast app 👈
Lawyers and immigrant rights groups have been unable to contact the men sent to the 40,000 capacity CECOT prison – the largest detention facility in Latin America.
A judge issued a temporary block on the deportations on 17 March, but this was lifted by the Supreme Court last week.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway