A Lahaina, Hawaii native shares that four of his family members have died in the wildfire and that another remains missing.
Lahaina native Jonathan Masaki Shiroma is mourning the loss of four family members, and said another is still missing. "You hear the words of devastation and then you realize that the hometown that, as a child, playing in the cane fields and near what was the Pioneer Mill, you know, and then the hearing that family members lost their lives as they tried to leave the flames that just engulfed so quickly, and one still remained missing – it becomes so personal.
A destroyed house is pictured in the aftermath of a wildfire in Lahaina, western Maui, Hawaii on August 11, 2023. The retired Lt. Col. with the U.S. Army has been deployed to numerous fires during his time working with the California National Guard to help provide critical updates to media, and now his hometown has been virtually destroyed.
"I've been on those wildfire coverages in California and seeing the devastation that occurs and cities burned to the ground – there's really no way to know how to respond in an emotional and, quite frankly, in any type of way, because it happened so fast," he shared. "With the magnitude of what's going on, everybody's trying to make heads or tails of what to do next. And I believe slowly but surely that that is starting to happen," he continued. "And it's just beyond, I guess, the scope of what we can sometimes fathom of dealing with things."
The fires nearly wiped out the historic town of 13,000 people and were still not fully contained Friday night on some parts of the island.
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