Shawn Vestal: Spokane couple helps those suffering after Maui wildfires

What they noticed first was the wind.

Dr. Ryan and Michele Holbrook landed on Maui last Tuesday afternoon. The first of the fires that would devastate the town of Lahaina on the island’s west side was burning, but they did not yet seem especially large or dangerous.

The winds that would soon change that – whipped up hundreds of miles away by Hurricane Dora – were already howling.

“It was so windy,” Ryan said. “It was a rocky landing.”

The Holbrooks, of Spokane, started to follow the typical routine for their annual visits to the island, heading to Costco to stock up and getting ready to drive to their cottage about 20 minutes north of Lahaina. But it soon became apparent, from the gridlocked traffic and sights of emergency vehicles everywhere, that it was not to be a routine day.

Over the course of the awful night that followed, wildfires gusted through Lahaina and west Maui with a devastating speed, destroying homes and property, blanketing the skies with bright flames and thick smoke, sending residents fleeing for their lives, and leaving a death toll of 96 that is expected to grow. The fires laid waste to the town of Lahaina, leaving the historic capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii and well-known tourist destination a charred, ashy wasteland.

“Gone,” Michele said of Lahaina. “It’s gone. It’s just apocalyptic. That’s the word being used over and over again.”

A retired surgical oncologist and semiretired psychotherapist, respectively, Ryan and Michele have spent the past several days at evacuation centers on Maui, using their professional skills to help people who have suffered unmeasurable loss.

Ryan, 68, is known for pioneering several innovative cancer operations. Over the past week, he’s treated many burn victims who are suffering shrapnel-like injuries from embers that were whipped about by the wind.

Michele, 67, has been moving among the traumatized survivors, sitting with them and listening to their stories.

“We see it in their eyes – the look in their eyes is haunted,” Michele said. “That tells me more than pictures or stories. It’s what I see in their eyes.”

The Holbrooks’ island home is safe, but they haven’t been able to reach it. They have found a makeshift place to stay in a small inn that’s under renovation in Wailuku, and they’re spending their days moving among evacuation shelters, helping as they can.

Lahaina itself is closed off, and they haven’t seen the town themselves. Those who have returned described scenes of incredible destruction.

“They’re saying whatever you’ve seen on TV, multiply it by 10,” Michele said.

They’ve heard story after story of devastation and loss. Of Lahaina residents who realized the danger they were in only when they opened their doors to swirling walls of flame. Of people who lost their homes and all their belongings in minutes. Of those whose loved ones were unable to escape.

Their second night on the island, they sat with an extended family that had suffered an unimaginable heartbreak: The bodies of a mother, father, their daughter and a young child had been found in their burned car.

“They hadn’t gotten out,” Michele said.

The family, with roots on the island of Tonga, had already lost almost everything in the fire – homes, jobs, belongings – and now this. The Holbrooks, who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, met this family at an evacuation site set up at an LDS stake center.

“We sat with this extended family as they took in the news of this unbelievable loss,” Michele said.

“There are so many stories like that,” Ryan said.

In the first days after the fire, Ryan was treating a lot of people with burn injuries at evacuation centers, including the largest one at the War Memorial Complex in Kahului, a town on the north side of the island.

The number of burned and injured people has strained hospital capacity on Maui and throughout the islands; Ryan was often treating patients who were suffering without sufficient pain medications.

He treated a couple whose home had been destroyed, and who had fled to the only safe place nearby – leaping from a sea wall into the ocean. The man landed on corals and suffered cuts to his legs.

After several hours, the flames died down, and they climbed back onto land, only to find that the ground was so hot it burned their feet. A firefighter rescued the woman, and the man jumped back into the ocean for another six hours, Ryan said.

Another man he treated – a chef at a yacht club – had stayed at the restaurant until it was nearly too late, when he also sought refuge in the ocean. That man found a kayak and was paddling on it when he heard the screams of two women nearby. They told him a young child was being pulled out to sea by the tide, and he was able to rescue the child.

Another man, 80 years old, found himself trapped among the flames on a baseball field and had no choice but to lay face down on the grass and hope the fire would pass. He spent hours breathing painfully hot, smoky air and suffering burns on his back, but he survived, Ryan said.

The Holbrooks said that as difficult as it is to witness the fires and their effects, there is also something sustaining in seeing people come together to help each other. The spirit of “ohana” – a Hawaiian word meaning family that also connotes the strength of community – is showing up everywhere, as people do all they can to help those in need, whether it’s providing haircuts or playing music or feeding the hungry.

“Each of us gives what we have, and somehow there’s enough,” Michele said.

They worry about how the rebuilding might contribute to the pre-existing housing crisis in Lahaina, with stories about developers already making offers to locals for their properties – a cycle that could make it even more difficult for locals to stay there.

In the meantime, they plan to continue volunteering at the shelters until their scheduled return to Spokane next week. As the days have gone on, people are beginning to emerge from the initial shock and beginning to talk to each other more.

Michele walks through the evacuation shelters, looking for the people who are returning eye contact, the people who seem to need to share.

“It’s really, really helpful for people to be able to talk about that trauma they’re going through, to be able to share it, to be able to share it repeatedly, in a safe way,” she said.