2023-08-12 01:09:28
“They say there are 55 dead, but surely there are many more,” says Esti Román, a young Spanish woman from Vizcaya who lives near Lahaina, one of the towns that have been devastated by the fires that are destroying the Hawaiian island of Maui. Since the fires broke out, she has welcomed friends into her house who were fleeing the flames and the clouds of smoke that made the air in one of the most beautiful places on the planet unbreathable. “Emotionally, we are all broken,” she says.
Just over 140,000 people live on the island of Maui, although this number increases due to the tourism that travels every year to this corner of the Pacific. The flames that have devastated the island began on Wednesday and, according to experts, their destructive power was increased by the winds of Hurricane Dora, which passed close to the island and made the fire more intense and spread further. fast through all the rain forests of Maui.
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“Scenery of War”
This explosive advance of the flames made many people look surprised and suddenly discover that the flames were already a few meters from their houses. The American rescue pilots who are flying over the area have assured that they are seeing “apocalyptic” scenes. On Wednesday, one of these crew members graphically described what they were seeing from the air: “It is as if the island has been bombed. It looks like a war scene.”
Above, a night scene of the fire on Maui. Below, the road that leads to Lahaina, the town most affected by the flames. Next door, one of the affected houses REUTERS
In the opinion of Esti Román, much of the damage caused by the fire will be discovered in the coming days. “The news is saying that there are more than a thousand missing, and I am afraid that some of them may have died. What’s more, the husband of a friend was sailing when the fires started and when he docked to go to his house he already saw several dead people on the shore. Many of those who haven’t shown up yet may be people who had to rush out of their homes when the fire hit. Perhaps they are incommunicado because, as a result of the fires, there are many areas of the island without electricity or water, “he says. The catastrophe has also caused gasoline to run out at service stations. “They have told us that fuel will be distributed in the next few hours. Many people will be able to move around the island and the damage will begin to be better known.
Alarm system
One of the circumstances that have exacerbated the devastation has been the absence of any type of prior alert by the institutions. “In Maui there is an alarm system that works perfectly and sends messages to cell phones instantly. Not only because we live on an island with two volcanoes, but also because tsunamis or hurricanes are common. We had received information about the proximity of Hurricane Dora, but they already said that it would not hit the island. However, about the fire there was no prior notice and when messages began to be received it was already to evacuate the towns. However, in some cases people had already started leaving their things for fear of the flames.
Image of the effects of the fire in an area of Maui. REUTERS
«In my house I have welcomed many friends because they were in the most dangerous areas. One of them left her house because of an intuition. She had a bad feeling, she took the car and left. An hour later, her home was gone, totally consumed by flames. All she has now is the mobile phone, the computer and the dog », says Román. He recounts that in other towns near the coast, people had not abandoned their homes when the flames came and destroyed everything in their path. “I know that in some places the neighbors had to jump into the water to survive,” he recounted in a telephone conversation with this newspaper.
Esti Román has been managing a luxury home in Maui for 18 years. The mansion -whose rent amounts to $50,000 a night- welcomes celebrities and American billionaires such as the owner of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. He came to Maui when a friend he worked with at the Baqueira ski resort told him about the magic of the island. He went for three months and has already been there for eighteen years. “Fortunately, the flames have not reached the place where I live and that is why we have been able to welcome people and give them shelter,” he explains. “I am much more concerned about Lahaina, because there are many more people there and at the time of the fire hundreds of tourists were residing there. There were also many people passing by », he laments. However, Esti Román wants to be optimistic with what can happen from now on. “Maui is a small island and here we all know each other. That makes me hopeful that the strength of the community will serve to get ahead faster. The problem is the lives that have been lost because there is no turning back”, he concludes.
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