anything like the firestorm that obliterated lahaina. you can see a little smolder of smoke. like oh, the house survived, but now there is a little brush fire. we are just pulling into lahaina now, first clips this town after hearing stories. it is worse than you can imagine. it is a world war two set. a scorched devastation. what was once the capitol of the kingdom of hawaii. one of the most well-preserved towns in the nation, is ash, including bill weiland s famous art gallery. he said he escaped the flames on his harley-davidson, riding around evacuees, trapped between fire and ocean. everyone else jumping in the water, flames were shooting over the top, i didn t even
there right now are devastating. hawaii numbers are rising. that puts it at one of the deadliest wildfires in modern u.s. history. officials say it is not slowing down. meanwhile, people are trying to get back into their homes. this is the line into lahaina. there is a roadblock at the end. people who have been waiting in the sign for 15 plus hours. people who need medication. people wondering about their friends and family. people with pets behind. people who need a place wondering if their homes are standing. there was a roadblock here, this was taken down for a few minutes. traffic was flowing for about 90 minutes.
nothing. like, everyone was just word of mouth evacuating. some residents are asking why they didn t hear warnings from the siren system before the fires erupted? why is governor telling nbc news that telecommunications were severely impacted by fire and high winds. much of the equipment was destroyed with the fire. it is a very remote place. of course, we would never diminish any kind of responsibility. we will leave it to our emergency management team to help explain things going forward. three other other systems were activated according to the why merge unseat services administration including phone, tv, and radio alerts. for now, the race to find survivors going more desperate by the hour. again, this road opening up. this is the road into town, into lahaina. a lot of people have been waiting in this line you see behind me for hours. i mean ours. e for just having to close off r
don t even have homes for themselves anymore. what do you do for these animals that may now need to be adopted if people don t even have homes to go home to? truthfully, i don t even think we re at that point yet. as the fires are still burning we have only been able to go into lahaina as of yesterday and it took four hours to go about 30 miles and so we are now just setting up the emergency response clinics and areas so that we can address what the animals need. we are going to have boots on the ground and rescue efforts to help keep any animal alive and reunite them with their families. you know, this is going to be an ongoing effort for weeks, for months, for years, and so the best thing that people can do on the mainland right now is donate because we do not know what is ahead of us yet because assessments cannot be completed while we are still in tragedy so we re asking people to donate at
now been mobilized to help with those recovery efforts, cnn s mike valero is on the ground in maui. well, jessica, this is the main roadway that leads into lahaina. about a 20 minute drive that way. if we spin around, this is what people who work and live in lahaina have to deal with, a queue, a line to get in that spans right now about a mile and a half behinds. so what you need to know is that people have been waiting to get in for more than 14 hours in some cases. as we zoom in, you can see a mix of utility workers, families, parents, college kids, people who are just waiting to see if their home survived the inferno tuesday night into early wednesday among. we spoke with two drivers before dawn, one of them ended up making it in, the other did not because of a traffic jam after this roadway was reopened just