ISSAQUAH, Wash. — One year after the Maui wildfires, a nurse from Issaquah is looking back on the tense moments she and a friend became surrounded by an inferno while on vacation in Lahaina.
"I have so many thoughts about it, but honestly the main one is that I still feel extremely fortunate," said Kristina Lee-Garrido. "The cards were not with us that day, or anybody in Lahaina. Nobody knew what was happening. For anybody to have survived that is pretty incredible."
Lee-Garrido and her friend were at a rental property when they first saw the flames surrounding the swimming pool.
"We got rescuers to come get us and worked out great," she told KING 5. "Seeing the drone footage online was haunting. I'd walked through those streets and met people. I don't know where they are now. Those pictures were like seeing a landscape that had been truly destroyed. I didn't know that was happening while I was there. I was just in the pool."
Lee-Garrido had been to Hawaii several times before last year, but that was only her second time visiting Maui.
She said she has no interest in going back.
"The best thing to happen in that experience is that I was with my best friend and we were faithful that someone would come and get us. It took a while but we're just happy to have been saved," said Lee-Garrido. "This was something that was just so horrible and tragic that I couldn't even believe it was unfolding in front of my eyes when it was happening. That kind of denial at the time was certainly helpful."
The wildfire destroyed more than 2,200 homes and left 12,000 people without housing. Thousands spent the past year in hotels and have slowly been moving into rental apartments, houses and temporary modular homes while permanent housing is built.
The county has started issuing building permits for lots in the burn zone, but rebuilding is expected to take years. Residents of Paradise, California, were still rebuilding their homes five years after a wildfire destroyed their town in 2018.
The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement estimates at least 1,500 Lahaina households - about one quarter of those who lost homes - have left Maui since the fire. A chronic housing shortage predating the fire has exacerbated the challenges of recovery.