Thousands of Bay Area residents make their way to Hawaii every year and on Wednesday, traveling plans changed for those heading to the islands.
Multiple fires swept across Maui overnight, especially in the famed Lahaina area that thrives on tourism.
Clint Hansen lives on the island and spoke with MSNBC after sharing drone video he shot following his escape from Lahaina.
“But with these winds, it whipped up real fast. People didn't have time. And we don't have the numbers but I think complete families are gone now,” he said. “People are running to the ocean to escape, jumping into it, getting rescued by the coast guard.”
At SJC Wednesday morning, many Maui-bound passengers first learned of the wildfires when they arrived for their flights.
“I didn’t realize how bad it was until we were basically on the way to the airport,” said Lindsay Caldwell of Santa Cruz.
One Alaska Airlines agent said most people cancelled their flights out after hearing their hotels would have no power and were advising travelers to stay away.
“Looks like there are pretty bad wildfires all over the place, so we’re trying to figure out if it’s safe to go there, and what are the logistics behind that,” said Ashwin Sridharan of Fremont. “Ours is probably a minor thing compared to the people going there, we were just going for vacation.”
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Others spent a couple hours calling hotels or their Vrbo hosts only to find out that the fires were so bad that nearly 2,000 people had to shelter at the Maui airport overnight after multiple roads were shut down.
“We are cancelling at this point, one of our son’s has a medical condition and we definitely don’t want to be stuck there with wildfires,” said Tulsi Patel of San Jose.
At one point, Maui County began telling everyone to only travel for an emergency so first responders could access the disaster scenes.
By Wednesday afternoon, most flights to the island were cancelled as the state worked to evacuate thousands to other islands.
The Shah family from Los Altos landed at SJC after staying in Lahaina.
“We were trying to get emergency groceries and the alarm went off and we knew something was wrong, they were trying to evacuate Lahaina and people started to get hiked up and really in panic mode,” said Kimberly Ocampo-Shah.
Outside the grocery store, they saw this massive plume of smoke and were directed straight to an evacuation center without their belongings.
“Which was very very hard because there was a lot of people who had lost their homes and had been separated from their loved ones,” said Rajiv Shah.
They were in the shelter for most of the evening. But as the fire grew, they say they realized the shelter lacked resources and was no longer safe.
“I asked an officer, I said ‘hey if it was your family and you were here what would you do?’ And he was like, ‘I’d head north brother,’ and he’s like ‘go, go that way,’” said Rajiv.
The family says they camped on a beach in Kapalua as they searched for the first flight out of the island with no luggage and no knowledge about the home they were staying at and whether it had burned down.
”I'm just grateful that we’re together, I kept saying, ‘we don’t have our stuff, but we're together,’” said Rajiv.
