Pensioner died protecting dog from flames in Hawaii
A pensioner died trying to protect his friend’s dog from the wildfires in Hawaii, it has emerged, as the death toll climbs and the search for bodies continues.
At least 93 people have died in the wildfires that razed the historic town of Lahaina on the island of Maui, a figure expected to rise as sniffer dogs widen their search.
The fires, already the deadliest in the US for over a century, has destroyed more than 2,000 buildings, most of them residential, and the town’s heritage museum.
Franklin Trejos, 68, initially stayed behind to help others and save the house of his friend Geoff Bogar, a retired fire captain.
As the flames moved closer on Tuesday afternoon, the day the wildfires started, Trejos and Bogar decided they had to flee, each escaping to his own car.
Mr Bogar, Trejos’s friend of 35 years, had trouble starting his vehicle and was forced to break a window and get out. He then crawled on the ground until a police patrol found him and took him to hospital.
When Mr Bogar returned the next day he found his friend hadn’t been so lucky. There, in the backseat of the car, lay Mr Trejos on top of Mr Bogar’s beloved three-year-old golden retriever Sam, whom he had tried to protect.
Trejos, a native of Costa Rica, had been close with Mr Bogar and his wife, Shannon Weber-Bogar, helping her with her seizures when her husband couldn’t. He filled their lives with love and laughter.
“God took a really good man,” Weber-Bogar said.
Review of emergency response expected
The fires gathered in intensity after midnight on Tuesday, fanned by Hurricane Dora, which passed south of the island chain, knocking out power and grounding firefighting helicopters.
By late morning the fires had spread to Lahaina, the centuries-old former royal capital of Maui, and by Wednesday had obliterated the town.
Many residents say the ferocity of the blaze caught them by surprise, with some forced to flee into the sea to escape.
Had they been better warned in advance, many argue, they would have had time to salvage some of their possessions, help loved ones and escape with time to spare.
According to the Hawaiian Emergency Management Agency, none of the state’s 400 outdoor alarms — used to warn people of natural disasters — went off, leaving people to rely on phones, internet, TV and radio for warning messages.
Rep. Jill Tokuda, a Democrat, said the state “underestimated the lethality, the quickness of fire” and that there was no phone coverage at a time for people to receive mobile alerts.
Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez will lead a comprehensive review of the emergency response with the goal of “understanding the decisions that were made before and during the wildfires,” her office said in a statement.
On Saturday authorities warned that the effort to find and identify the dead was still in its early stages, with cadaver dogs having covered only three per cent of the search area.
“We’ve got an area that we have to contain that is at least five square miles and it is full of our loved ones,” noting that the death toll is likely to grow and “none of us really know the size of it yet,” said Maui Police Chief John Pelletier.
