An island usually associated with its blue and sunny skies is now engulfed in smoke and flames with hundreds of evacuations underway on the Hawaiian island of Maui.
It’s a nightmare not many residents on the island expected.
"It happened so fast. I've never been in any environment where I could be around a fire like that," said Claire Kent who says lost her home in Lahaina. "We were just sitting at home kind of having a Hawaiian snow day is what we call it, and then we see the fire. When the fire started, I heard the first explosions of the gas stations exploding and then I saw the black smoke a couple streets away, and within half an hour we were out the door."
The National Weather Service had issued a red flag warning for the area indicating factors like low humidity and high winds posed a threat.
Local experts to give perspective on this wildfire and factors that played a big role in fueling these flames.
“The smoke, even on some of the satellite images coming out there this morning, you can just see kind of that layer of smoke coming out of the Lahaina area," said Vivian Rennie, KSBY Daybreak meteorologist. "It's in western portions of Maui, which means there's a couple of added additional issues with that, especially because it is on a drier part of the island."
The strong winds played a bigger influence on the fire.
“With these grasses that have dried out and then we have the winds from Hurricane Dora, which are frankly like what we experienced with the Santa Ana winds in California is just these winds are being pushed through into buildings and towns," said Dr. Chris Dicus, wildland fire and fuels management professor at Cal Poly.
“They heat up, they speed up and they make it really tricky for those firefighters," added Rennie. "We see that here on the Central Coast when we see those winds coming over hills becoming really erratic with those winds when we fight wildfires here and they're facing pretty much the same thing."
According to Hawaii officials, the strong winds have also knocked out power on parts of the island.
