2023-08-13 22:46:00
At least 93 people died this week in the devastating fires that hit the island of Maui in Hawaii. Cornered by flames, a from Mar del Plata miraculously escaped from that hell by entering the sea, where he remained for 8 hours until he was rescued by firefighters.
In a moving audio he sent to a friend, the young man from the city recounted – with a broken voice and contained tears – the dramatic situation that he had to live, in the midst of the deadliest fire that affected the United States since 1918when 453 people died in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
“I saw two people die, I have them in my image and I start to think and I say: it can’t be, friend, it might have been me. And then they found dead people in the ocean. You don’t know, friend, how crazy it was. terrible madness, I felt fear. Yesterday there was a bit of wind and I felt scared, I want to go,” he confessed. Nicolas Vazquez in the Whatsapp message, still traumatized by the hard time he had gone through 48 hours before.
The fire started in the early hours of last Tuesday for reasons that are still unknown, quickly devastated homes and businesses and endangered the lives of more than 35,000 inhabitants of the island. While, Lahainaa town of more than 12,000 inhabitants that was once the capital of the kingdom of Hawaii, it was left in ruins and its shops, hotels, homes and restaurants were reduced to ashes.
Gov. Josh Green said the death toll is going to rise. In Lahaina, a hundred people jumped into the sea to flee the flames. In the water, there are still bodies floating of those who failed to escape the smoke and flames. The heat from the flames was so strong that those that were recovered are difficult to identify, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier explained, adding: “None of us yet know the scale of the disaster.”
The authorities confirmed the death of 93 people, but believe that the number of fatalities is higher. Photo courtesy Rick Bowmer, AP.
“Dude, you don’t know what I went through. I’m excited”, He began by telling his interlocutor. “If I didn’t die it was because my uncle said: No, Nico, stop fucking around, you have to get out of here”said the man from Mar del Plata, still shocked by what he had to live just 3 days following arriving in Hawaii.
“I was locked with the car in the whole quilombo of the fire and I might not escape to another part because I did not know much either. He was going from here to there, seeing where the people were going. People were crazy too, people walking down the street… The black sky, friend, at 4 in the followingnoon. I was barefoot, on top of that,” he continued.
Faced with this panorama and the impossibility of moving forward with his vehicle, the man from Mar del Plata decided to put on his shoes, take a backpack and his most valuable belongings, abandon the vehicle and continue on foot.. He told himself “Nico, you’re not going to die in a car” and walked towards the ocean, where he dove.
First, he wanted to climb on some stones, but he felt that “fire and smoke were eating me from behind”. So, he threw his backpack there -where his passport, wallet and cell phone were- and went into the Pacific. “I was from 4:30 to 12 at night in the ocean. All the sky black. When gusts of wind came, the smoke made you shit, friend. I had to dive because not…”, He described without being able to finish the sentence, overwhelmed by anguish. “I haven’t cried yet, boy, and now I feel like crying“, he added.
“All the time I had to have a shirt to cover my mouth becauseand you mightn’t breathe. I was afraid of that, friend. To die choking on smoke because it makes you shit. I was there for 8 hours, until 12 at night. In those 8 hours I saw how all the cars were burning and said: damn, a gang of cars is missing and until all the cars in a row burn, I was not going to stop the fire. Said and done: all the cars began to burn. Crazy, guacho,” said Nicolás.
The man from Mar del Plata was taken to a shelter, where he met another survivor from the city.
At 12 at night, seeing that the fire had ceased, the man from Mar del Plata decided to approach the stones once more. “The smoke continued and I stayed once morest the stones, all covered up, covering my face, my nose, until 3 in the morning when the firefighters came and took me to a shelter.”detailed regarding his journey.
The young man spent the rest of the night in the shelter, incommunicado because he lost his cell phone and his other belongings in the sea. But Fate had a magical encounter in store for him in the midst of despair. “I was always alone, friend, because I was living alone. And yesterday in the shelter, thank God: Melany,” he told regarding the incredible coincidence with another young woman from Mar del Plata, named Yañez, who was also left in the middle of the catastrophe.
“I don’t know if you saw the movie “The Impossible”. This is literally happening to me. I lost my passport, my wallet, I have nothing to communicate with. I said that she appeared but my mom still didn’t know if he was alive or not because there is no sign here. It was only when we changed shelters that we hooked up a signal,” he finished his story, still unable to digest what he had to live through and grateful to be able to tell it.
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