Canadians returning home from Maui tell stories of ‘war zone’ horror
For the first time in hours, Chris Watkins, an officer with the Ontario Provincial Police, had a single bar of cell service. With shaking fingers, his wife Jessie dialled their 20-year-old son, Carter, who was home in Kingston while the pair vacationed in Maui. They wanted to say goodbye.It was 4:30 on Tuesday afternoon, and the Watkinses were trapped on a sunbaked road outside the historic oceanside town of Lahaina, on the Hawaiian island’s west coast.
“We were getting blasted by the heat of the fire,” Mr. Watkins recalled. “The wind was blowing 110, 120 kilometres per hour.” Red embers were falling like hail on their car, pinging against the roof. The acrid smoke was so thick they could barely see. Ms. Watkins jumped out to help. The firefighter was in cardiac arrest. At least one other had severe burns, she said. When the fallen responder was loaded into the back of an SUV, Ms. Watkins hopped back in with her husband, who followed a line of cars slowly snaking along the Honoapiilani Highway to Kihei. The drive, which should have taken 20 minutes, lasted more than five hours.over whether they acted with enough urgency to evacuate Lahaina and warn residents of the danger they were in.
Also on the island during the disaster was British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Matthew Taylor. He said road closings left him nowhere to go but Lahaina’s Front Street, where he found himself shortly before the wind-whipped flames rolled in. Justice Taylor managed to reach his wife, Justice Amy Francis, also of the B.C. Supreme Court, who was home in Vancouver. She was able to book tickets for her husband and their two teenaged daughters on Friday morning’s Air Canada flight.
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