SEATTLE — Mino McLean was on her way from Maui to Seattle when she learned the devastating news, wildfires had ripped through the island, killing at least six and destroying more than 200 structures.
“While I was on the plane, Lahaina was completely destroyed,” McLean said. “The Kaiser clinic down Front Street burned down, every building, every home, entire neighborhoods, gone.”
McLean is from Kula, Maui which is about an hour from Lahaina. She was supposed to stay in Seattle until August 16, but because of the fires, she’s going back home. She said the first thing she’s going to do when she gets there is hug her kids.
“It’s very sad -- right now I’m just hoping we can get the support we need to help the people that are displaced,” she said. “And I mean it’s still happening; there are fires active right now and I don’t know what’s going on.”
The devastation is unlike anything she’s ever experienced or had to deal with.
“We were all just like, ‘oh we’re going to have some high winds,’ but the high winds were devastating and those are the winds that took down powerlines which sparked the fires that were uncontrollable,” she said.
We talked to another family on Wednesday who had to hunker down in a Walmart parking lot as fires burned near their timeshare.
A state of emergency has been declared and officials are urging people not to travel to the island unless it is absolutely essential.
“When an entire zip code is nearly wiped out, I don’t even know how you recover,” she said. “There’s no medical facility over there, there’s a housing shortage, no gasoline, no, nothing.”
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