Photo: Why a Wooden House in Lahaina Was Spared in Maui Wildfires

Table Of Content

• Massive mental health toll in Maui wildfires: 'They've lost everything'
• News
• More from CBS News
• 'Miracle house' owner hopes it will serve as a base for rebuilding Lahaina
• Nearly 100-year-old house withstood a historic fire
• See the nearly 100-year-old "miracle house" that survived the Lahaina wildfire and now sits on a block of ash
• Communications breakdown left authorities in the dark and residents without alerts amid Maui fire, report says

For hours until the morning, they alternated between fits of tears and restless sleep while parked on the roadside, stuck in traffic. Unable to get into Lahaina, Alicia Kalepa sent her 17-year-old twin daughters by boat to check on the family's property. It wasn’t until the girls returned by driving a winding and narrow road north of Lahaina that she got confirmation that the vast majority of Leiali’i was unscathed. Keola Beamer, a famous slack key guitarist who lives in Leiali’i, found significance in the neighborhood's name. “Lei” can mean garland in Hawaiian and “alii” refers to chiefs or royalty. Unable to get into Lahaina, Alicia Kalepa sent her 17-year-old twin daughters by boat to check on the family’s property.

Massive mental health toll in Maui wildfires: 'They've lost everything'

At least 114 people have died in the Maui wildfires that started last Tuesday. After the renovation, the house was nominated to join the National Registry of Historical places. Identified as the Pioneer Mill Company/Lahaina Ice Company Bookkeeper's House, the dwelling was used by bookkeepers of a company that did everything from delivering ice and soda water to selling electric power to the town of Lahaina. That’s followed by the “near home environment” — the area immediately surrounding the structure, she said. Experts suggest that homeowners clear flammable vegetation in a 5-foot radius and replace it with a hardscape feature such as paving stones or gravel — similar to what the Millikins did, she said. Pattie Tamura, whose family owns the house believes it survived due to its concrete walls.

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His group connected garden hoses and he broke down a homesteader’s fence to keep the fire out of the community, he said. Hours of makeshift firefighting with garden hoses and buckets of water across Lahaina didn’t stop flames from consuming his house, his rental properties and thousands of other structures in his beloved hometown. Atwater Millikin also said she and her husband replaced the asphalt roof with a metal one. Trip Millikin and his wife, Dora Atwater Millikin, bought the Front Street house in 2021, according to the Civil Beat. The home, which once housed a local sugar plantation's management employees, is thought to have been moved from the plantation to its current location in 1925, the Civil Beat reported. They hadn't made any efforts to fireproof their home, they told local news outlets.

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She recalled when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speculated that the 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 people when it destroyed Paradise, might have been started by a laser beam in space. Millikin and his wife bought the property in 2021, working with the county on a historic preservation plan before embarking on a nearly two-year renovation project. They did much of the work themselves, along with a local carpenter and the help of neighbors. Pictures have gone viral of a single red-roofed home that appears virtually unscathed as the neighbourhood around it has been reduced to piles of ash and rubble from the Maui fires. In a breathtaking photo, the lone, 100-year-old wooden house on Front Street is seen unscathed alongside numerous other properties that have been turned to ash and rubble. Millikin told the outlet that when they were doing renovations, they also put it in a commercial-grade steel roof and dug out old landscaping to replace it with river stones about a meter around the house.

Water in the neighborhood, like much of Lahaina, remains unsafe to cook with or drink. Just two of the neighborhood’s 104 homes were lost to the fire, an immense relief amid a disaster that destroyed more than 2,000 buildings and killed at least 97 people. They switched out the home's asphalt roof for one with heavy-gauge metal, surrounded the house with river stones and removed foliage around it. HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Among the rows of charred buildings, ash and rubble along Front Street stands a home with a red roof, appearing virtually unscathed from a devastating wildfire that tore through the community. Photos of the wooden house, standing intact while its neighbors were reduced to ashes, quickly became an online fascination.

Two years ago, the couple purchased the 100-year-old property that used to be a bookkeeper's house for employees of a sugar plantation. The 100-year-old wood house on Front Street is still standing as most of the town of Lahaina has been destroyed. The fires are considered the worst natural disaster in Hawaiian state history.

But more importantly, experts say the homeowners’ decision to replace the landscaping around the house with river stones may have also helped keep the flames at bay. She was told that during the fire, “there were pieces of wood — 6, 12 inches long — that were on fire and just almost floating through the air with the wind and everything,” she told the LA Times. The fires singed one part of the structure, but the only damage there was a warped PVC pipe on a wall. "Everybody's calling it 'the miracle house,'" Trip Millikin, who owns the home at 271 Front St., told NPR. But that label makes him uncomfortable, he added, citing the flood of emotions that came with learning that while his house was spared, his community was gutted.

The National Weather Service said Hurricane Dora was partly to blame for the strong winds that knocked out power as night came. Stunning aerial images of the unscathed property went viral last week — while also sparking bonkers conspiracies that the local devastation was a targeted laser attack from space. Friends have offered an apartment in a nearby town and Dora and Trip plan to come and volunteer to work in the recovery effort. When they do, they'll also cope with the shock of seeing Lahaina without the people and places that, until Aug. 8, made up the town's fabric. "What's behind it are the original — I think they're redwood — planks from about 1920. They didn't burn," Millikin said.

Communications breakdown left authorities in the dark and residents without alerts amid Maui fire, report says

Red-roofed house inexplicably left nearly untouched on Maui coast surrounded by burned out rubble and destroye - Daily Mail

Red-roofed house inexplicably left nearly untouched on Maui coast surrounded by burned out rubble and destroye.

Posted: Thu, 17 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

After purchasing the property, the Millikin couple renovated the historic structure, which used to be a bookkeeper’s home for a nearby plantation. Alongside luck and potentially favorable winds, the renovations may be a key reason why the Front Street home is still standing, though none of the changes were made as a means of fire prevention. Without the proper precautions, houses can "start catching each other on fire," Wara told Civil Beat. "If enough of the homes have that kind of preparation then that chain reaction doesn't get started."

Workers with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands erected a temporary black screen to protect Kalepa's house from any potentially toxic dust that might blow over from a house that burned just outside the homestead’s boundary. People have been forced to take refuge in shelter homes and are being provided with necessary items like food and water. Workers with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands erected a temporary black screen to protect Kalepa’s house from any potentially toxic dust that might blow over from a house that burned just outside the homestead’s boundary. But when he and his wife are able to go back, he’s hoping to set up his home as some sort of a community hub for people trying to rebuild theirs.

But the next day, he received a picture – in the middle of dozens of piles of ash stood his home, largely untouched. Suddenly, he had what some are dubbing on social media as a "miracle house," often seen in the aftermath of fires in places like California. "The house was an absolute nightmare, but you could see the bones of it," he said, saying that the local historic building suffered from a rotting exterior.

"It looks like it was photoshopped in," Trip Millikin, who owns the house, told local outlet Honolulu Civil Beat. Records show he and his wife Dora Millikin bought the house in May 2021 after what he told the Civil Beat was a long time of bicycling by. Maui county records show the house at its current location at 271 Front Street is 81 years old, and sits on more than 11,000 square feet of property at 271 Front Street in the city that was once the long-standing capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom. The current homeowner told Civil Beat that he and his wife bought the property in 2021 and worked with the county on a historic preservation plan before starting a renovation project. The wildfires, fanned by strong winds, burned multiple buildings, forced evacuations and caused power outages in several communities.