The day after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century devastated a coastal community on Maui, the barrage of 911 calls didn’t let up: Reports of missing people, stranded relatives and confused tourists stuck without food or water lit up emergency lines every few o’clock. minutes, alternating with reports of new fires starting and older fires flaring up.
The 911 recordings from the morning and early afternoon of August 9 were the third set of calls released by Maui police in response to a public records request. They show how first responders and emergency responders – many of whom had already worked long hours during what was likely the most harrowing experience of their lives – continued to be hampered by limited staffing and widespread communication failures.
Several callers contacted 911 throughout the morning asking for welfare checks for family members or friends they could not reach. In some areas, mobile communications were still unavailable. Authorities told people to call the non-emergency police number to file missing persons reports, or so police could contact the Red Cross and other volunteers who had registered evacuees at the shelters.
But callers who couldn’t get through on the non-emergency line turned to 911.
“My house is in Lahaina, in the fire zone. And I haven’t been able to contact my husband. Is there any way I can have someone drive by the house? a woman asked just after 1:30 p.m
Another caller called around 9:45 a.m. to report his wife was missing.
“She should be in Lahaina. She went to work yesterday,” the caller told a dispatcher.
In one case, a 911 caller reported that a family missing their 15-year-old son had been “ignored.”
The operator’s answers were the same every time. Emergency responders couldn’t help find missing people because they were still trying to get everyone to safety, still working at hot spots and responding to fires. There were not enough officers to conduct home or welfare checks, but most of the city had been evacuated to shelters.
They told callers to wait for cell communications to return and to keep trying the non-emergency line.
“I’m really sorry, that’s all I can tell you right now,” an operator said.
Maui County and police officials did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment Saturday.
One hundred people have died as a result of the Lahaina fire, and thousands of survivors remain displaced as their homes have been destroyed or severely damaged.
Callers turned to 911 when information was scarce or when they heard conflicting information.
A handful of residents called to ask if the Lahaina Bypass had reopened. They said they heard on the radio that it was open to traffic again. Emergency services have repeatedly combated the misinformation.
Early in the morning, dispatchers reprimanded some callers asking how to get to the airport, or what roads would be open, saying the line was for emergencies only.
One caller told how he and his family grabbed an elderly couple during the evacuation to help them get out of Lahaina as well. But he said the man went with him and the woman went with his uncle, and they were unable to contact each other to reunite the couple.
“We don’t know what to do with him,” the caller said.
“You can take him to one of the emergency shelters so he can rest and get something to drink,” the coordinator told him, adding that once communication was restored, volunteers there could help find his wife.
Coordinators were forced to deal with sometimes impossible situations, trying to reassure people, while also knowing that resources were scarce.
An exhausted Lahaina survivor walking along the highway south of town called for help just before 1 p.m.
“Our house has completely burned down and everyone is just passing us by. We are dying out here. There are 12 of us, all like we’re walking along the Pali,” he said, using a nickname for a coastal, cliff-top section of the Honoapiilani Highway. He asked someone to pick up the group and said he was afraid of dying from heat exhaustion.
The dispatcher said there were no buses to come get them, but they could send ambulances if needed.
Just before 11 a.m., someone from another island called on behalf of some Lahaina residents who had lost their homes and vehicles but had fled up the mountain away from the burning city.
“She has her husband and their two children and some neighbors,” the caller said. The group was safe from the fire, but had no food and water and could not evacuate.
“I’m going to let the fire department know about this,” the dispatcher said, “but we’re really short on resources. And they’re going to see what they can do.”
At the time, firefighters were still extinguishing the flames that had destroyed much of Lahaina, as well as battling three other fires in and around the cities of Kula and Kihei. People living near the fires continued to report flames in their properties and fires flaring up again, such as in Lahaina.
In one case, a 911 caller reported seeing flames and hot spots on his property and attempted to extinguish them with a garden hose that quickly lost pressure. Another reported that her husband and son were fighting a fire that broke out on their ranch in the Upcountry region of Maui, but they feared they would need helicopter assistance.
Some areas were still littered with potentially dangerous downed power lines. One person who called several times in the morning reported that she and her husband tried to turn on the power at their Kula-area home, but the lines were sparking and smoking. She eventually managed to knock out the power lines with the help of a friend who worked at the power company.
Callers sometimes had difficulty controlling their frustration. A woman called in tears saying her family had left their resort when the power went out the previous day.
“We slept in our car. We can’t reach the hotel. My medication, my car keys, everything is there. My child has autism. His medicine is there. I just don’t know what to do,” she said.
The dispatcher offered to have a doctor sent for the woman’s son and also suggested she try to have her doctor call in a prescription. But she said no one was allowed back into Lahaina.
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Boone reported from Boise, Idaho, Lauer from Philadelphia and Whitehurst from Washington. Associated Press journalists Corey Williams in Detroit and Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Hawaii, contributed to this report.