House surrounded by burned-down homes survives Maui wildfires

Table Of Content

• Nearly 100-year-old house withstood a historic fire
• days that rocked USC: How a derailed commencement brought ‘complete disaster’
• Bare electrical wire and leaning poles on Maui were possible cause of deadly fires
• Watch: New videos show how Maui families escaped the wildfires
• Climate change supercharged a heat dome, intensifying 2021 fire season, study finds
• Jeff Bezos has paid $15.5M of the $100M he promised Maui after wildfires — but no one knows where it went

Images of the red roofed house have gone viral on social media and survivors of the tragedy are marvelling at the miraculous occurrence. Some social media users have nicknamed the structure as ‘The Red House That Survived Hawaii Wild Fires’. Aerial footage of Lahaina recorded by KITV, showed the house which got spared in the wildfires. "When this was all happening, 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," Atwater Millikin told The Times. "They would hit people's roofs, and if it was an asphalt roof, it would catch on fire. And otherwise, they would fall off the roof and then ignite the foliage around the house." "We removed five layers of asphalt that were on the roof," Millikin said.

Nearly 100-year-old house withstood a historic fire

Millikin and his wife, Dora Millikin, fell in love with the Front Street house several years ago, although it was vacant and had fallen into a state of disrepair. Millikin has spent much of the last week — in between anxious calls to check up on friends and neighbors — puzzling over why his house was somehow spared. Friends have offered an apartment in a nearby town and Dora and Trip plan to come and volunteer to work in the recovery effort.

days that rocked USC: How a derailed commencement brought ‘complete disaster’

"It's so horrifying because this is just the most wonderful community of people. Everybody knows everybody, everybody works together, it's a community." "There was a neighbor who sent a note to us and said, 'Oh, you won the lottery.' And I almost wanted to throw up when I got that. I felt so badly, because these are my friends. These are my neighbors. And that's all gone." "As soon as we can, we want to open it to our neighborhood and open it to everybody who worked on it, as a base to help rebuild our part of Lahaina," he said. According to Honolulu Civil Beat, the home was known as the Pioneer Mill Co./Lahaina Ice Co. Bookkeeper’s House and was believed to have been moved from a plantation to Front Street in 1925.

Bare electrical wire and leaning poles on Maui were possible cause of deadly fires

Millikin said the decision to install river stones for about a meter around the house was not actually aimed at fire prevention. He wanted to prevent runoff from landscaping from creating water and termite damage. The house is what’s known as a craftsman-inspired “plantation vernacular” dwelling, a style of homes constructed mostly by sugar and pineapple plantation companies in the early 20th century. The Millikins, who started living in Lahaina more than a decade ago, used to bicycle by the house and talk about what it would take to fix the sagging roof, the rotting lanai, the peeling paint. Bookkeeper’s House, is believed to have been moved to Front Street in 1925 from a nearby plantation. All of them, he added, should feel proud that the house is still standing — and they should know they're welcome to return when they can.

A mother raced to save her son from the Maui fires. She couldn't reach him

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. Before they bought the house, the Millikins had been living in an apartment nearby for around 10 years. When they managed to buy the dilapidated oceanfront house that had been sitting on the market, neighbors welcomed the news that they planned to restore it.

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The wildfires in Maui have claimed more than 100 lives and thousands of buildings and homes have been destroyed in the blaze. However, a church in Lahaina had survived the flames while other structures around it got decimated. In another discovery, authorities and residents are shocked to see a red roofed house which remains unscathed while homes and property around it, have been burnt to the ground. The wildfires that struck Maui earlier this month devastated the historic town of Lahaina, reducing nearly every building to ashy rubble — but one wooden house in the center of it all survived unscathed.

Watch: New videos show how Maui families escaped the wildfires

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 switched out the home's asphalt roof for one with heavy-gauge metal, surrounded the house with river stones and removed foliage around it.

Climate change supercharged a heat dome, intensifying 2021 fire season, study finds

There are other hazards, too, Oliveira said, such as burned-out cars along roads and chunks of metal or concrete in the ruins. Lana Vierra is bracing to see the ruins of the home where she raised five children, a house that started with three bedrooms in 1991 and was expanded to six to accommodate her extended family as the cost of living in Hawaii soared. People have been forced to take refuge in shelter homes and are being provided with necessary items like food and water. While she is glad her family’s home survived, Tamura said she’s not eager to visit the house and her cousin’s family, who currently own it, anytime soon. "So many people have lost everything, and we need to look out for each other and rebuild. Everybody needs to help rebuild."

Jeff Bezos has paid $15.5M of the $100M he promised Maui after wildfires — but no one knows where it went

"We love our neighborhood and love our friends, and just cannot believe that that world that we knew so well and loved — it's gone forever." 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. That project included a new, commercial-grade steel roof that likely would’ve provided better protection from embers than shingles. She hopes to return as soon as she can and open the place up for neighbors who have lost their homes. The county informed the couple that their house had survived in a phone call the following day, she said.

Mr Millikin and his wife said they are unsure exactly what saved their home. 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 red-roofed home's owners were on a trip to Massachusetts when they heard news of the fire.

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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. Millikin was in Massachusetts when the Aug. 8 fire broke out in Lahaina. But the next day, he received a picture – in the middle of dozens of piles of ash stood his home, largely untouched.

The two-story house appears unharmed with white walls and a red roof, standing in stark contrast with the nightmarish sight of the ashes and charred foundations that remain of the neighboring homes. In fires like the one in Lahaina, there are enormous amounts of flaming embers that are flying through the air. And if there’s something next to the house that is combustible — a wood fence, a bush, dry grass — that’s often what will ignite the structure, Wara said. From some 5,000 miles away, he got live updates from his friends who were on the ground, watching their neighborhood be destroyed.

Working closely with the county and the local historic commission, they replaced the asphalt roof with heavy-gauge metal — the home would have originally had a roof of either wooden shake or thinner-grade corrugated tin, she said. They lined the ground with stones up to the drip line of the roof, which overhangs by 36 to 40 inches. Abbott stressed that the SMA and other county permit rules do more than simply make things slower for owners. For instance, he pointed to the so-called “Miracle House” on Front Street, which survived the fire — in part because of its steel roof — while surrounding structures with shingle roofs burned.

She said as the fires blazed, large pieces of wood would hit people's roofs. "If it was an asphalt roof, it would catch on fire. And otherwise, they would fall off the roof and then ignite the foliage around the house," she 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. The house at 271 Front St. in Lahaina survived a wildfire because of its metal roof, a lack of vegetation along its dripline, "and a lot of divine intervention," its owner says. Photos of the wooden house, standing intact while its neighbors were reduced to ashes, quickly became an online fascination. 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.

But the fire left a red-roofed house seemingly untouched by the devastation around it. The best haunted houses in Los Angeles run the gamut from homegrown horrors to big-budget amusement park productions—unsurprisingly, the home of Hollywood horror films takes its Halloween events very seriously. Whatever thrills you, whether it’s a hayride in Griffith Park or immersive theater at an old estate in Pomona (or perhaps some real-life haunted places), we’ve got it in this year’s list of the city’s best haunted houses in L.A.

As part of the process, the owners consulted guidelines for building in Lahaina’s historic district and learned a steel roof wasn’t merely fire resistant but consistent with the area’s historic architecture. The pathway for expedited residential rebuilding is opening as Lahaina moves from the immediate response phase to the recovery phase, which includes rebuilding damaged structures. The Recovery Permitting Center will be open only for residential properties, and the county has not unveiled an alternative plan for commercial properties. This along with other issues makes the  future of Front Street uncertain. Still, the result of the current plan could significantly speed building for residential property owners. First, the Coastal Zone Management Act has been suspended for Lahaina under Gov. Josh Green’s Emergency Proclamation Relating To Wildfires, said Mary Alice Evans, director of the state Office of Planning and Sustainable Development.