Jordan Saribay, who lives in Lahaina, said he thinks the number of deaths will increase even more.
Jordan Saribay’s family ran away from the fires on the island of Maui just seconds before their town, Lahaiana, was turned to ash.
In an interview on Sunday, he described the chaos when he was safe on O’ahu. He said that people were trying to get away from smoke, traffic, and, finally, fires pushed by the wind.
“We’re in fight-or-flight mode,” he said. “We’re trying to grab anything we can reach and get to our cars.” “As we’re doing this, I can see that one of the houses next to or close to my grandmother’s house is already on fire.”
As the fires got closer, Saribay was in Lahaina with his grandma. As he was walking to her house, he saw that the nearby row of houses was covered in thick, dark smoke.
He recorded the smoke coming from a nearby house that was on fire.
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“At one point, you could just see the flames getting pretty high, and it was like a wall of fire was already pushing down,” he said. “And the wind is the strangest thing about it. As was said, it was 80 miles per hour which is pretty fast. And it was pushing it so fast that it was heading straight for the houses.”
As Hurricane Dora moves the fires and makes it harder to put them out, the winds have caused the disaster to seem even worse.
Most of Saribay’s family was lucky enough to leave earlier, but he and his grandmother had to stay behind and try to pack some things before leaving.
He planned to go to his close home next and tell Cain he hadn’t had time to get anything from there. At that point, the fire was getting closer and spread to the house right before his.
Even though his family could escape, not everyone was as lucky. As the number of reported deaths from Maui’s wildfires rises to a shocking 93, Cain asked about stories of traffic jams and people dying in their cars as they tried to escape.
Saribay said, “Some people were able to get out, but not everyone.” “I was getting ready to leave, and as I made my way through the neighborhood, I found that traffic was bad, so I took a different route… and that was already crowded and full of smoke, so I had to go back up to the exit I just left.”
“Basically, all of the houses I passed in the neighborhood were already on fire, so I’m already on my way out…”
Saribay said he’s scared to find out the actual number of deaths, and he warned that the numbers we see now don’t show the chaos that’s to come.
“You can only imagine how much loss there was after hearing everyone’s stories,” he said. Later, he added, “The number we see now isn’t the number it’s going to be, and it’s going to be much higher because it’s so hard to get out.”
