Hawaii officials released maps Tuesday detailing new evacuation routes that will be built in Lahaina, Hawaii, to help prevent the type of roadblocks that trapped people in their burning neighborhoods during the wildfires on Maui.
An opening in a sound wall in the Kelawea Mauka neighborhood will be created to allow cars to pass through and provide more access to the Lahaina Bypass, a main highway, during emergencies, the state Transportation Department said. The sound wall is currently used to minimize noise from traffic on the bypass.
A route will also be established at the top of Lahainaluna Road, a popular thoroughfare that was blocked by debris, fleeing residents and fire trucks during the Aug. 8 wildfires on western Maui, which killed 101 people, transportation officials said.
An emergency access route was already opened in October for several area schools, running about 2.5 miles from the Lahainaluna fire lane to the Lahaina Bypass, Gov. Josh Green's office said.
A second phase to create more access points near the bypass is under construction, it added.
Only two major roads lead out of Lahaina, and the bypass became inaccessible because of how close it was to the wind-driven fire, which sent people jumping into the Pacific Ocean to escape the raging flames.
Dozens of residents said in interviews that reaching Lahainaluna Road became nearly impossible when downed trees and other debris turned Lahaina's narrow streets into fiery death traps.
"You couldn't wait for police to evacuate you," Lahaina resident Andrea Pekelo said.
The new evacuation routes are part of a broader effort to make Lahaina more resilient to wildfires, which are a growing threat throughout Hawaii.
A spokesperson for the state Transportation Department declined to say why the Kelawea Mauka neighborhood was being addressed first or why more evacuation routes out of the neighborhood were not established sooner.
When flames threatened to engulf Kelawea Mauka in August, panicked residents had few options to escape.
Pekelo said she was stuck at a chokepoint as she tried to flee her home near the sound wall. She had been packing some belongings and securing her three dogs and her guinea pig when she heard a police siren outside her house.
“Get out now,” she remembered an officer saying.
She threw a few belongings into her car and backed out of her driveway, but she did not make it far. The streets surrounding her home on Kanakea Loop were crammed with dozens of fleeing neighbors. Four houses down, flames engulfed a home.
Pekelo saw people running to their cars with suitcases and a long procession of vehicles trying to make their way through the narrow streets and onto Lahainaluna Road, which connects the bypass to a highway out of town. A neighbor stood with a hose in hand, watering passing cars so they would not catch fire.
Pekelo tried to leave her neighborhood through a nearby subdivision, but homes were already on fire, and a fire truck blocked access to Lahainaluna Road, she said.
Panicked, she considered outrunning the encroaching flames after she posted a video to her Instagram account. She thought it could be the last thing she ever posted, she said months later.
Instead, Pekelo’s uncle who lived nearby helped three other neighbors and a police officer knock down a fence that blocked access to a popular park. Once the fence came down, hers was the fourth car to drive across the dirt and grass toward safety, Pekelo said.
“We try not to talk about it,” she said last fall, sitting outside her home, which survived the blaze.
An NBC News analysis found the largest concentration of deaths occurred in Lahaina's Kuhua Camp neighborhood, just three blocks from Pekelo's home. The neighborhood was once temporary housing for sugar cane workers, including Pekelo's grandfather, and grew over more than a century into a cramped subdivision of homes on narrow streets filled with dozens of vehicles that made it difficult to navigate on a normal day.
Dozens of residents detailed narrow escapes similar to Pekelo's. All of them talked about being unable to access main roads because of traffic and debris.
After NBC News published its analysis, the Maui County Police Department issued a draft report with information about where victims of the fire died. The county’s map shows nearly 50 deaths in Kuhua Camp or on its fringes.
