The Maui wildfires left this laid-back oceanside town in ruins killed 115 people and possibly hundreds more, their names and ages shrouded in ash amid painstaking efforts to identify the dead.
As the Maui fires raged, senior victims had to fend for themselves washingtonpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from washingtonpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The 35-unit apartment complex in Lahaina may have been one of the first major buildings consumed as a brush fire tumbled down from the hills on Aug. 8. Two residents of Eono have been named among the 111 confirmed deaths, and another half-dozen residents are still not accounted for, families said in interviews.
The independent-living complex in Lahaina was one of the few housing options for low-income older adults on Maui, where soaring rents have forced more and more seniors into homeless shelters or onto five-year waiting lists for subsidized housing.
Before fire tore through the Hale Mahaolu Eono senior-living complex, trapping a man in his wheelchair and forcing a 95-year-old grandmother to flee through a blizzard of embers, before it killed two close friends and left neighbors missing, people felt lucky to live there. The independent-living complex in Lahaina was one of the few housing options for low-income older adults on Maui, where soaring rents have forced more and more seniors into homeless shelters or onto five-year waiting lists fo