A massive brush fire on Maui burned out of control for a second day Sunday.
The fire by Sunday evening had charred some 4,700 acres around Maalaea and was about 30 percent contained, according to the Maui Fire Department.
Some two dozen MFD personnel and a dozen firefighters from the state Forestry Division spent much of Sunday dousing hot spots near the intersection of Kuihelani and Honoapiilani highways, where the fire started, to the Ukumehame area.
A fire helicopter and two other contracted helicopters dropped water around the perimeter of the fire, and a bulldozer from Goodfellow Bros. Construction cut firebreaks.
The fire stranded hundreds of motorists Saturday, including Mayor Alan Arakawa, when officials closed a 15-mile stretch of Honoapiilani Highway between Olowalu and Maalaea.
Red Cross Maui County Director Michele Liberty said 472 people stayed at the War Memorial Gym in Wailuku and about 250 at the Lahaina Civic Center on Saturday night. The shelters closed Sunday morning.
Arakawa said in a statement that he was stuck in Lahaina on Saturday night and was “forced to take the back road out, which is not made to handle heavy traffic.”
He said the fire was a “perfect example” of the need for an alternate route to and from West Maui.
“Our residents and visitors can be cut off at any time due to a brush fire, rockslide or even a bad traffic accident, as they were” on Saturday, Arakawa said. “I urge our state delegates, governor and lieutenant governor to do another environmental impact study that looks at every alternative to creating another West Maui route. These events that cut off Lahaina from the rest of the island are happening all too often, and we need to look for other solutions.”
Texas resident Jessica Priest said by telephone the power abruptly shut off in the restroom of the Kaanapali Ocean Resort Villas as she was preparing to leave. The bellhop told her there was a large fire and that she might have to stay another day on Maui.
Priest didn’t believe him, but almost three hours later she was still on her shuttle in Lahaina because of the road closure. She said the shuttle driver said there was another route he could take, through Kahakuloa, but it was dangerous and he needed special approval to use it.
“It was really frustrating because there was no cellphone service, so I couldn’t call my airline to tell them I was missing my flight,” she said.
She walked around Lahaina, tried a pay phone that didn’t work, and walked past shops with signs saying the credit card machines were down.
She wasn’t able to reach the airline until about 3 a.m. Sunday and booked the earliest flight back home at 8:10 p.m. She arrived at the airport at 1 p.m. Sunday in case there were flare-ups that closed the roads again.
