Red roofed house in Maui miraculously remains unscathed after Hawaii wildfires World News

Table Of Content

• Hawaii lawmakers take aim at vacation rentals after Lahaina wildfire worsens Maui housing crisis
• National
• year-old ‘miracle house’ in Lahaina survives deadly Maui fire
• Hawaii lawmakers target vacation rentals after Maui wildfire heightens housing crisis: ‘It is bulls–t’
• California wants to harness more than half its land to combat climate change by 2045. Here’s how
• BBC News Services

Civil Beat is a small nonprofit newsroom that provides free content with no paywall. He went to bed feeling physically ill out of fear for the fate of his friends, his neighborhood, and his home. Millikin, who was on a trip to Massachusetts during the Lahaina fire, said the last he heard from his immediate neighbor on Aug. 8 was that the whole neighborhood was burning and his home was unlikely to make it.

Hawaii lawmakers take aim at vacation rentals after Lahaina wildfire worsens Maui housing crisis

'It's a miracle:' Catholic church untouched by Maui wildfires as blaze destroys surrounding town - New York Post

'It's a miracle:' Catholic church untouched by Maui wildfires as blaze destroys surrounding town.

Posted: Sat, 12 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

She recalled when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speculated that the 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 people when it destroyed Paradise, might have been started by a laser beam in space. Millikin and his wife bought the property in 2021, working with the county on a historic preservation plan before embarking on a nearly two-year renovation project. They did much of the work themselves, along with a local carpenter and the help of neighbors. Pictures have gone viral of a single red-roofed home that appears virtually unscathed as the neighbourhood around it has been reduced to piles of ash and rubble from the Maui fires. In a breathtaking photo, the lone, 100-year-old wooden house on Front Street is seen unscathed alongside numerous other properties that have been turned to ash and rubble. Millikin told the outlet that when they were doing renovations, they also put it in a commercial-grade steel roof and dug out old landscaping to replace it with river stones about a meter around the house.

National

MAUI, Hawaii — When an inferno tore through Lahaina on the island of Maui, it reduced a historic and charming town to ash and rubble. But the fire left a red-roofed house seemingly untouched by the devastation around it. Just two of the neighborhood's 104 homes were lost to the fire, an immense relief amid a disaster that destroyed more than 2,000 buildings and killed at least 97 people. Many of the homesteaders have taken in friends and relatives who lost homes nearby.

year-old ‘miracle house’ in Lahaina survives deadly Maui fire

“If shrubs and bushes, especially flammable ones, are right up next to the house and embers catch them on fire, the heat can burst the window and it goes right into the home from there,” Kocher told the LA Times. When the new metal roof was installed, he added, it included an air pocket to allow heat to dissipate. At the ground level, they removed all vegetation along the house's dripline and added a stone buffer — a step taken to thwart not fires, but termites.

"I'm probably coming home in a couple of weeks, or when I can," Millikin said, adding, "I can't stay at my house." 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. The list also includes Harry, he said, who by virtue of his work on the house's roof has the right to park at the house and go surfing any time he wants to. "It's so horrifying because this is just the most wonderful community of people. Everybody knows everybody, everybody works together, it's a community."

‘Incredible miracle’: Maui church unscathed by fire - NewsNation Now

‘Incredible miracle’: Maui church unscathed by fire.

Posted: Tue, 15 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

The National Weather Service said Hurricane Dora was partly to blame for the strong winds that knocked out power as night came. Stunning aerial images of the unscathed property went viral last week — while also sparking bonkers conspiracies that the local devastation was a targeted laser attack from space. Friends have offered an apartment in a nearby town and Dora and Trip plan to come and volunteer to work in the recovery effort. When they do, they'll also cope with the shock of seeing Lahaina without the people and places that, until Aug. 8, made up the town's fabric. "What's behind it are the original — I think they're redwood — planks from about 1920. They didn't burn," Millikin said.

The latter is what likely made the biggest difference in the house's ability to withstand the flames, Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at the Stanford Wood Institute for the Environment, told Civil Beat. There, too, they also unknowingly improved the property’s odds of survival, having lined the ground with stones up to the drip line of the roof, and cut down foliage that was up against the outside walls. One decision that may have unknowingly helped it survive the wildfire — the deadliest in the US in more than a century — was replacing the asphalt roof with one made out of heavy-gauge metal, she told the LA paper. There are many questions about when residents of the worst-hit parts of Lahaina might be able to come and survey what's left of their community. From some 5,000 miles away, he got live updates from his friends who were on the ground, watching their neighborhood be destroyed.

California wants to harness more than half its land to combat climate change by 2045. Here’s how

Millikin is hoping to channel his luck — and his feelings of guilt — into community action. He’s been told by neighbors that it’s best to stay put outside of Lahaina while he can so as not to take up much-needed resources for other survivors. In the instance of the Front Street house, there was also a considerable amount of luck involved, he said. Because even the most well-prepared house can catch fire when the homes next to it are burning. Millikin said the decision to install river stones for about a meter around the house was not actually aimed at fire prevention.

With the help of local carpenters and construction workers, the homeowners trimmed trees on the property and installed a commercial-grade steel roof. Unlike shingles or asphalt roofing, the steel roof may have provided better protection from rogue embers. Trip told Civil Beat they also removed existing landscaping around the home and filled the dug-out areas with river stones. 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.

"It looks like it was photoshopped in," Trip Millikin, who owns the house, told local outlet Honolulu Civil Beat. Records show he and his wife Dora Millikin bought the house in May 2021 after what he told the Civil Beat was a long time of bicycling by. Maui county records show the house at its current location at 271 Front Street is 81 years old, and sits on more than 11,000 square feet of property at 271 Front Street in the city that was once the long-standing capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom. The current homeowner told Civil Beat that he and his wife bought the property in 2021 and worked with the county on a historic preservation plan before starting a renovation project. The wildfires, fanned by strong winds, burned multiple buildings, forced evacuations and caused power outages in several communities.

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. "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."

He wanted to prevent runoff from landscaping from creating water and termite damage. During renovations, Millikin installed a commercial-grade steel roof, something that definitely would have provided better protection from flying embers than shingles. At first, Millikin thought this might have made the biggest difference in why his home was spared. 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. The red-roofed home's owners were on a trip to Massachusetts when they heard news of the 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. Despite their guilt, the Millikin couple intends to help others in the area who weren’t lucky enough to keep their homes. Though they will not return to Lahaina until they are certain they won’t take any much-needed resources from survivors, Trip and Dora said they want to use their property as “a base” for those who need it.

In an interaction with the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, Tamura shared that the house was built by her grandfather using cement to help it withstand bugs and dry rot. For one, Atwater Millikin said they laid stones in place of foliage surrounding the house. "It's a 100% wood house, so it's not like we fireproofed it or anything," Atwater Millikin told the outlet. In the morning, a friend called and sent them a picture from a helicopter flyover of Lahaina.