Table Of Content
- More from CBS News
- Hawaii lawmakers take aim at vacation rentals after Lahaina wildfire worsens Maui housing crisis
- Red roofed house in Maui miraculously remains unscathed after Hawaii wildfires
- Massive mental health toll in Maui wildfires: 'They've lost everything'
- California wants to harness more than half its land to combat climate change by 2045. Here’s how
- Bon Jovi’s Wife Skips Premiere After His Candid Confession
“We lost neighbors in this, and neighbors lost everything,” Atwater Millikin told the California paper. The red-roofed house may also have benefited from not being too close to neighboring properties — often the main fuel for fires — instead being bordered on three sides by the ocean, a road, and an empty lot. A flood of names come to mind when Millikin thinks of the 20 or so people who w0rked to renovate the house. Or Hoi, the carpenter who helped coordinate the work, and Kenji and Wayne, who painted, and Ongele and Gloria, the husband and wife who repaired stonework and did other tasks. Before they bought the house, the Millikins had been living in an apartment nearby for around 10 years.
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However, any combustibles were largely removed from the under-deck area, which also faced the ocean. Fire crews battled multiple fires in the popular tourist destination of West Maui and an inland mountainous region. Firefighters struggled to reach some areas that were cut off by downed trees and power lines. However, owner Dora Atwater Millikin put it down to a handful of routine changes during a recent renovation — none of which were aimed at surviving such a disaster.
Up First briefing: Trump's week; 'Rich Men North of Richmond'; Lahaina miracle - NPR
Up First briefing: Trump's week; 'Rich Men North of Richmond'; Lahaina miracle.
Posted: Fri, 25 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Hawaii lawmakers take aim at vacation rentals after Lahaina wildfire worsens Maui housing crisis
She hopes to return as soon as she can and open the place up for neighbors who have lost their homes. Atwater Millikin is an artist who makes paintings of New England coastal scenery, and her husband is a recently retired portfolio manager. They have owned the home for about three years but lived elsewhere on Maui for about a decade, she said. Some have also speculated the home was saved by sprinklers, Atwater Millikin said. It did have a sprinkler system, but so did many of the other homes in the area that burned, she said. In any event, by the time the fire reached the home, the electricity was out and the system wasn’t working, she said.
Video Shows Historic Church Survived Maui Wildfires Unscathed - Daily Caller
Video Shows Historic Church Survived Maui Wildfires Unscathed.
Posted: Sat, 12 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Red roofed house in Maui miraculously remains unscathed after Hawaii wildfires
When a friend later showed the Millikins’ a photo of their house standing alone after the fire, surrounded by other not-so-lucky properties, their feelings were complicated. So when they finally got the chance to buy it, they did, and completely revamped the property. And doing that may have just been the thing that ensured its survival in the fire. That project included a new, commercial-grade steel roof that likely would’ve provided better protection from embers than shingles. Atwater Millikin and her husband plan to return to Maui soon and open their place to neighbors who were left homeless. While the house had sprinklers, so did most of the neighbors’ properties, and the system wasn’t working when needed because the power was out, Atwater Millikin said.
BBC News Services
The wildfires that struck Maui earlier this month devastated the historic town of Lahaina, reducing nearly every building to ashy rubble — but one wooden house in the center of it all survived unscathed. She said as the fires blazed, large pieces of wood would hit people's roofs. "If it was an asphalt roof, it would catch on fire. And otherwise, they would fall off the roof and then ignite the foliage around the house," she said.
Massive mental health toll in Maui wildfires: 'They've lost everything'
"There was a neighbor who sent a note to us and said, 'Oh, you won the lottery.' And I almost wanted to throw up when I got that. I felt so badly, because these are my friends. These are my neighbors. And that's all gone." "As soon as we can, we want to open it to our neighborhood and open it to everybody who worked on it, as a base to help rebuild our part of Lahaina," he said. That risk is highest when the other building that burns is 30 feet away or less, said Stephen Quarles, UC Cooperative Extension advisor emeritus. Vulnerable components would be the siding, windows or under-eave area, as well as any foundation or attic vents, he added.
When they managed to buy the dilapidated oceanfront house that had been sitting on the market, neighbors welcomed the news that they planned to restore it. By intention or not, those changes jibe with wildfire guidance from the Colorado State Forest Service, which stresses the importance of steps such as reducing your home's ability to ignite. "A 'noncombustible zone' near the home and under the deck is an excellent strategy to reduce the vulnerability of the home to a wind-blown ember exposure," Quarles wrote in an email. The county informed the couple that their house had survived in a phone call the following day, she said.
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Airborne embers are the most common source of wildfire spread, the Colorado agency's Daniel Beveridge told NPR. The house has roots dating to 1925 — it's believed to have been moved from another location on Maui. After Millikin and his wife bought it in 2021, they finished a restoration project in 2022. "We love our neighborhood and love our friends, and just cannot believe that that world that we knew so well and loved — it's gone forever."
In fires like the one in Lahaina, there are enormous amounts of flaming embers that are flying through the air. And if there’s something next to the house that is combustible — a wood fence, a bush, dry grass — that’s often what will ignite the structure, Wara said. "So many people have lost everything, and we need to look out for each other and rebuild. Everybody needs to help rebuild." The blazes destroyed most of the historic Maui town of Lahaina and the fires are now considered the worst natural disaster in Hawaii state history.
“What folks in the wildfire business call the zone zero or the ember ignition zone, is kind of a key factor in whether homes do or do not burn down,” Wara said. Experts say it was likely a little bit of all the above, but that one element of the home’s recent renovation is actually the most affordable and important thing people can do to try and protect their homes. “It looks like it was photoshopped in,” homeowner Trip Millikin said of the house, which stands in such contrast to the surrounding ruins that images of the home have gone viral in recent days. The couple say they hope to return to Lahaina when it's safe, and when they do, they plan to offer up their home for the many who have lost theirs. Instead, he and his wife are using it as a symbol of hope amid the destruction that has killed more than 100 and left more than 800 missing. Kocher said the house had many of the qualities that would help it survive such disasters.
The historic structure on Front Street is the last house standing in a neighborhood reduced to rubble. The house at 271 Front St. in Lahaina survived a wildfire because of its metal roof, a lack of vegetation along its dripline, "and a lot of divine intervention," its owner says. Beveridge said there's no way to know for sure exactly what preserved the house on Front Street, but "the metal roof and lack of adjacent flammable material ... certainly limited the means by which the structure could have ignited." Kocher worries that surreal images such as the one of the Lahaina house can lend themselves to conspiracy theories if people don’t understand the science behind how fires spread. She recalled when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speculated that the 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 people when it destroyed the California town of Paradise, might have been started by a laser beam in space. In this case, a regular asphalt composition roof would likely have done just as good a job as metal, as most have a Class A fire resistance rating, she added.
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