Lahaina Man Recounts Race Through a Wall of Fire That Leveled the Hawaiian Tourist Town

Dave Vogt saw people trapped in cars, unable to avoid the inferno bearing down on them as he and his dad escaped on dirt bikes. "If you stopped, you were dead."

Racing to save his boats from the raging inferno devastating the Hawaiian tourist town of Lahaina, Parasail owner Dave Vogt saw things he’ll never forget.

“Everything was blowing up. Everything. Every five seconds you hear, 'Boom! Boom! Boom!' ” Vogt, 40, tells PEOPLE. “I think it was the gas tanks from the cars stuck on the roads.”

Vogt was one of countless residents and tourists trying to escape when Lahaina was burnt to the ground on Aug 8 after hurricane force winds sparked flames from a yet undetermined source and ignited the dry fields around the area. With little or no warning, residents and tourists were forced to flee from the tiny town with limited access on narrow roads.

Many are presumed dead when they could not get out of their cars before the flames consumed the gridlocked vehicles.

“If you stopped, you were dead. Animals were dead in the street, people were trying to get out,” Vogt says. “There was no opportunity to give a warning. It was faster than anyone could have pushed a warning button, it was windy and then the fire started and it went fast.”

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When the wind first started up, Vogt wasn’t overly concerned. Even a downed telephone pole only served as a reminder that the family should make a trip to the local Safeway to get supplies in case it got worse.

There had been a hurricane warning, but it wasn’t expected to hit the island. Vogt was sitting in his truck with the kids while his wife went into the store. Then, he says, it got really, really windy.

“Something didn’t feel right, so I told her to get out of the store,” Vogt says. “All of a sudden, power lines came crashing down. But no sign of fire yet. I have a big truck. We jumped the curb, went up the hill and just [tried] to get out of Dodge.”

Five minutes later, they looked back and smoke was everywhere, “just like an inferno.”

That was when Vogt made the decision to drop the family off at the house five miles from Lahaina and grab his father to help move the boats from the downtown harbor area. By the time they got there, the roads were barricaded. So the two men ran on foot to where their boats were being kept.

They quickly moved the boats to a safe spot at an inlet. Vogt had two dirt bikes at the boatyard, so they jumped on them and rode out of town. They bypassed the lines of cars where people were stuck and felt the heat rising as the fire swooped down on the town.

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“It was hot, just like a torch, and the wind was so strong and swirling and the glow kept getting bigger and bigger, pushing down towards us,” Vogt says. “The fire jumped Front Street and jumped into the harbor.”

And in between were people trapped in their cars.

“I think people were scared to get out because there was fire all around them,” Vogt says.

The fire melted the dock lines first, he added, and caught the boats on fire. The wind blew them out into the water, and most ended up on the reef.

“They were still on fire the next day, slowly burning,” Vogt says. “It looked like Ukraine.”

Some of the boats blew up right away, before they even melted the lines, just instantly on fire.

At the harbor, people who chose to abandon their cars were jumping into the water. The heat was melting the plastic boat ties, sending them adrift and in flames.

“It was a fiery mess,” Vogt says. “And a lot of it was the fire on the water. It might appear to be on the water, but it was the boats burning while they're sinking.”

“The Coast Guard was calling on fishing vessels that were out there to come help pick people up,” Vogt says. “So the only people who could help were out on the boats.”

When Vogt returned on Wednesday, he surveyed the damage of an aluminum boat he had completely melted in the intense heat, burned out cars, boats smoldering in the harbor - and bodies on the seawall.

“There were a lot the night before,” Vogt says. “But when I was there we only saw two or three. They must have cleared a lot. There's a section of cars they're not touching.”

Vogt says they cleared every road he saw except one section of the gridlocked Front Street.

“I think they're not doing that because there's people still burned in those cars,” Vogt says.

Related: Everything to Know About the 2023 Hawaii Wildfires, Including Ways to Help the Victims

People now are questioning why alarms weren’t sounded earlier in order to avoid this massive tragedy.

“There probably should have been a more aggressive activation at the onset, more preparation,” Hawaii State Sen. Angus McKelvey told USA Today. “We heard about the red flage warning as brush fires were definitely a concern initially, not this cataclysmic totality that overwhelmed the community.”

But Vogt doesn’t think there was time given the conditions he observed.

“I would pass the blame if there was blame to have been passed,” he says. “But the fire was moving as fast as the wind. And the wind was fast.”

In parasailing, Vogt says, “all we do is watch the wind. It’s never what the forecasters say. It’s usually way stronger.”

So he generally errs on the side of caution. What made this different, he believes, was the overgrown dry grasses and old cane fields that weren’t maintained with cutting or controlled burns.

“The old cane fields are all around, so there was plenty of fuel for the fire,” Vogt says. “The town is surrounded by these dry fields. So there was plenty of fuel for the fire and it set fire to the town.”

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For now, Vogt says he is fine. But he is concerned for his employees, who lost everything in the fire.

“They are the ones who need the help right now. They barely got out with the shirts on their backs,” Vogt says. “So I’m hoping a GoFundMe can help them.”

If you would like to help these local workers directly, please donate to Employees of Ka'anapali Beach Parasail.

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