OMAO — A fire destroyed a house on the south side of Kaumualii Highway between Omao Road and Koloa Road on Tuesday.
The owners of the home said they spent well over a year building their house, but the flames consumed the wooden structure in a matter of minutes. By the time firefighters responded to a neighbor’s 911 call, it was already too late to save the home.
“When we first got here, flames were shooting up out the windows,” said a fireman on the scene.
The house was owned by a middle-aged couple who preferred not to give their names but said they built the house with their own hands. Fifteen years ago, after a year-and-a-half of labor, their place was ready to move in. A month later, their son was born.
When asked how she was holding up, the woman answered quickly and succinctly — “In shock.”
The woman said no one was home when the fire broke out. She had left home earlier in the day, and her husband and son drove away from the house about 2:30 p.m. to meet her in town. By the time they got to Lihue — a 15-minute drive — friends and neighbors started calling to tell them their house was on fire.
“I was like, ‘What?’ We were just there!” she said.
“I mean, it could have been at night,” she said. “And that would have been a lot worse.”
The source of the fire remains to be determined, but the female homeowner speculated that a malfunctioning power strip may have sparked the flames. The most badly burned part of the house was the living room, near an area where the television and other electronics were plugged in, she said.
The woman and her husband stood back from the scene, watching firefighters in gas masks going through the tedious process of tamping out the remaining embers of their smoldering home. Thick white smoke gushed out from under the eves. A couple of Red Cross workers took down their contact information and asked if they had a place to sleep that night.
The man was more stoic than his wife. The sun sank in the humid afternoon, and the man came to grips with the fact that his family had just lost everything they owned. The realization came in bits and pieces. He punctuated long silences with lists of his family’s ex-possessions.
Almost everything burned, from the essential to the priceless and useless. They lost the tools they built the house with and the utensils they cook their food with. Maybe more significant were their riding saddles, trophies and awards — they are horse people.
“You cannot replace what we had inside there,” the man said, nodding toward the rubble.
A fireman nearby ducked out of an opening that was once a kitchen door and walked to the truck with an axe on his shoulder.
Behind the man, a young woman walked up the dirt road and saw the house for the first time since the fire. Her face turned different, and she leaned heavily into an auntie’s shoulder.
“Oh God,” she sobbed. “This can’t be.”
I asked the man what he’s going to do. He answered without hesitation.
“Build ‘em again,” he said.
