2023-08-12 07:08:34
WAILUKU, Hawaii (AP) — Leshia Wright heard the crackling of hell rushing toward her home in Lahaina and decided it was time to leave.
Wright, 66, grabbed his medication for a lung condition and passport and fled minutes before flames engulfed the neighborhood in Hawaii’s historic coastal community. Hours later, he called his relatives and told them that he was sleeping in his car.
But then his cell phone went off.
The next 40 hours were agony for her daughter in New York and her sister in Arizona. Until early Friday morning, Wright called them once more and told them that she was fine.
“Obviously I am very relieved that my mother is alive,” Alexandra Wright said, adding that her mother had finally been able to charge her cell phone following arriving at a friend’s house, which had not been damaged, with just a quarter of a st. fuel in your car.
The firestorm that killed dozens of people and leveled the historic town plunged hundreds into a desperate search for loved ones — many thousands of miles away — and some were still searching. But in the midst of the tragedy, moments of joy and relief arose for the luckiest as their mothers, fathers or siblings reached safe places and reconnected.
Kathleen Llewellyn also used the phone from far away in Bardstown, Kentucky, to try to reach her 71-year-old brother, Jim Caslin, who had lived in Lahaina for 45 years. Her calls went directly to voicemail.
“He doesn’t have a house, he lives in a van. He has leukemia, mobility problems, asthma and lung problems, ”she indicated.
Llewellyn waited, called, and waited once more, her worry growing. Her anxiety washed over her, and then turned to her resignation as this nearly retired lawyer tried to distract herself from working and weeding her garden.
She remembers thinking, “If this is her end, this is her end. I hope not. But there’s nothing I can do.”
Then her phone rang.
“I’m fine,” Caslin said. “I’m fine”.
Caslin told him that he spent two days escaping hell with a friend on a trip that included heavy traffic, closed roads, downed trees and power lines, and a flat tire. The couple watched nervously as the fuel gauge dipped before finding a gas station and joining the long line.
“I’m a pretty controlling person, but I cried a lot,” Llewellyn said.
Sherrie Esquivel set out on a desperate search to find her father, a retired mail carrier in Lahaina, but there was little she might do from her home in Dunn, North Carolina.
He put his 74-year-old father’s name on a missing persons list with his phone number and waited.
“As the days went by, I thought, ‘There’s no way he survived because … how come we haven’t heard from him?’” she recalled. “I felt so helpless.”
But early Friday, she got a call from a neighbor of her father’s who told her they had located Thom Leonard. He was safe in a shelter but had lost everything in the fire, he told her.
It wasn’t until Esquivel read an Associated Press article that he learned exactly how his father survived. He had been interviewed Thursday at a shelter on Maui.
Leonard tried to drive away from Lahaina in his Jeep but mightn’t, so he waded into the ocean and hid behind a levee for hours while the wind covered everything in hot ash.
“When I found out regarding that, I thought back to when he was in Vietnam and I thought, ‘Oh, gosh, his PTSD must have kicked in, and his survival instincts have kicked in,’” she said.
In the end, firefighters escorted Leonard and other survivors out of the devastated city.
Esquivel assumes that it is the same boardwalk in front of his house where the family took photos at sunset in January.
He had hoped to speak to his father, whom he describes as a “hippie” who refuses to buy a cellphone.
When they speak, the first words out of their mouths will be: “I love you, but I’m mad at you because you don’t have a cell phone,” Esquivel said.
Interviewed at the same shelter on Friday, Leonard burst into tears when he heard what his daughter wanted to say. “I’m shaking,” she said, adding that he loves her too.
Leonard claimed he had a cell phone with a cover, but he didn’t know how to use it.
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Thiessen reported from Anchorage, Alaska, and Komenda from Tacoma, Washington.
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