San Francisco Chronicle
(TNS)
Oct. 31—As fires burned and embers flew around Front Street in Lahaina, a small group of Maui police officers pulled up to a darkened coffee shop — and found it filled with people.
"Come out! Come out! Come out!" an unidentified officer yelled as he opened the door to the business as the Aug. 8 inferno bore down.
A group of roughly 15 people streamed out before the officers stuffed them into cars and caravanned away from the doomed tourist corridor, making their way to safety as they choked and coughed. The near-disaster was captured in one of about three dozen Maui police body-camera videos released Tuesday in response to a public records request.
The footage, many hours in total, starts on the morning of Aug. 8 when a small fire broke out amid stiff winds on the eastern edge of Lahaina along Lahainaluna Drive, where a powerline buckled over in the stiff winds. The videos continue through the day and into the night as the fire sweeps downhill to the ocean, destroying most of Lahaina.
A majority of the videos show officers knocking on doors to try to evacuate residents and directing clogged traffic of fleeing cars. Officers can be heard speaking to one another, shocked at the blaze's massive spread.
In the end, 99 people died in Lahaina and six are still missing. The blaze nearly completely destroyed the popular tourist destination. Fleeing residents and tourists were pushed to Front Street, along the ocean, where people resorted to jumping into the water when flames overwhelmed cars.
In one 6-minute, 22-second video, an officer races toward the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in a strip mall just off Front Street. He drives past flames and into thick black smoke at 6:41 p.m. As he grabs the front door of the cafe, a group of people emerge.
"About 15 trapped parties," the officer reports over his radio.
"Everybody out! Everybody out!" the officer yells as he ushers the survivors out, some holding flashlights because the cafe's power had been out. Leaves whip across the sidewalk from the winds buffeted from Hurricane Dora to the south.
The group is split into different vehicles and the officer helps stuff a shirtless man into his backseat, on the lap of another man. As the officer drives away, he begins coughing from the smoke. Palm trees sway in the wind.
"F— bruh," the officer repeats as he speeds off. Another officer riding in the front passenger seat asks if anyone needs a medic, but everyone says they are OK.
As they drive away from the flames, the officer navigates fallen power lines before, eventually, the surroundings get brighter.
At one point, the officer believes the other vehicles caravanning with him are lost, so he turns around to find them.
The footage ends as the officer drives on what appears to be the island's bypass highway to take the people in his car to an evacuation center.
Satellite images appear to show that the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and the surrounding building suffered damage in the fire, but that the building was one of the only ones to survive in the Front Street area.
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