THROUGH THE SMOKE

The aftermath of the Maui wildfires

- CAROLYN KORMANN

At 4 P.M. on August 8th, Shaun Saribay’s family begged him to get in their car and leave the town of Lahaina, on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The wind was howling, and large clouds of smoke were approaching from the dry hills above the neighborhood. But Saribay—a tattooist, a contractor, and a landlord, who goes by the nickname Buge—told his family that he was staying to guard their house, which had been in the family for generations. “This thing just gonna pass that way, downwind,” Saribay said. At 4:05 P.M., one of his daughters texted from the car, “Daddy please be safe.”

Within ten minutes, it became clear that the fire had not passed downwind. Instead, towering flames were galloping toward Saribay’s house. He got in his truck and drove to Front Street—Lahaina’s historic waterfront drag—and found gridlock traffic. Saribay, a stocky forty-two-year-old man with a tattoo covering the left side of his face, texted his daughters. “Don’t worry. Dad’s coming,” he wrote. Then he lost cell service. At 4:41 P.M., he pulled into the one large open space he could find, a parking lot behind the Lahaina United Methodist Church, which had just started to burn.