Saskatoon resident relives ordeal in fire-ravaged Maui

After nine of days of paradise, a Saskatchewan resident’s Maui vacation went from magic to mayhem.

Keith Willoughby, the dean of the University of Saskatchewan’s Edwards School of Business, left Saskatoon with his wife on July 30 for a 13-day vacation in Maui.

They stayed in Kapalua, which is a resort community on the northwest tip of Maui around 15 kilometres north of Lahaina.

He told Gormley on Monday the bliss and serenity of the vacation ended on Aug. 8.

“We woke up to huge winds and the power being out in our community. We later found out the entire power grid of all of (western) Maui … was completely shut down – no power, no WiFi, no nothing,” Willoughby said.

Given that situation, he added they decided to leave Kapalua and drove to Kahului for lunch, with the intention of returning to their hotel in Kapalua.

“When we had driven to Kahului, we had gone through the Lahaina area and we’d seen several downed power poles, transmission wires, the impact of the storm the previous night – the Hurricane Dora,” he said. “Traffic was inching very slowly along the highway.”

Unlike Saskatchewan’s grid highway system, Willoughby said there’s only one highway that goes into and out of western Maui.

“With very narrow roads, traffic was quickly becoming congested. Around 4:30 p.m., we got close to Lahaina. There’s a bypass area about (1.6 kilometres) south of the community,” he added. “That’s where we saw incredible plumes of smoke emerging from the Lahaina area. Traffic was backed up on the bypass – several hundred vehicles.”

Willoughby added at that point, he saw the fire raging in the distance.

(Keith Willoughby/Submitted)

“We were told by the emergency officials that all the highway north of Lahaina going up to Kanapali to Kapalua was completely shut down,” he said. “Given that situation, we opted to go back into Kahului just to top up our gas tank because we’re thinking, ‘This could be (an) infinitely long wait’ (and) we didn’t want to run out of fuel.”

Willoughby said they then decided to get back on the congested highway to see how far they could get back to Lahaina and were stopped near Ma’aleaa about 25 kilometres outside of Lahaina, where the police had set up a barricade.

“We stayed parked on the side of the road for the next 41 hours along with a few hundred other vehicles,” he said. “Basically, with limited information, none of us knew if we would be allowed in in a few hours or it would be sometime later.”

He said the highway never ended up being cleared for personal vehicles, but everyone who was parked on the highway was ordered off it to make room for emergency traffic.

“We were requested then to go seek shelter in some of the evacuation shelters in the Kihei and the Kahului area,” he added.

In the end, Willoughby and his wife never got back to Kapalua to enjoy the remainder of their trip after sleeping two nights in their car and then seeking refuge in an evacuation shelter.

“The shuttle buses were taking people back to … Kanapali or other areas past Lahaina to go get (their) belongings,” he said. “We had an imminent flight … coming back to Canada on Friday the 11th.”

Fortunately, he said he was allowed onto a shuttle bus to make it back to their rental unit so he could quickly gather their belongings the day before their flight.

“In the complete darkness with just the light of my iPhone, (I) went into our rental unit in Kapalua and picked up our luggage, stumbled into a few things, organized a few things then quickly ran to the shuttle bus and got back into Kahalui and flew out Friday evening,” Willoughby added.