“We pick up remains and they fall apart,” said Maui County police chief John Pelletier on Saturday, four days after a massive wildfire tore downhill through dry brush and grass and engulfed the island’s western edge.
Dozens of survivors shared their stories of escape and loss with the BBC, helping to piece together a more complete picture of the tragedy that unfolded on Tuesday, when fires moving at a mile per minute consumed the town.
One thing seemed to unite their accounts: residents say they had no official warning before they fled for their lives, raising painful questions about the effectiveness of the emergency response and whether more people could have been saved.
For Tee Dang, a tourist from Kansas, the first clue that her vacation had taken a deadly turn came in the form of an Airbnb host barrelling past her door and telling her family to run.
At 4:29pm, Maui’s emergency management agency had publicly announced perhaps its first evacuation order, writing on X (formerly known as Twitter) that residents of Kelawea Mauka, a neighbourhood on the edge of Lahaina, needed to leave.
Residents like Lynette “Pinky” Johnson loaded their cars with as many as could fit, before driving eastward along the Honoapiilani Highway - the only viable route to safety - as flames lapped at their wheels.