A Year Ago, He Ran into the Flames. Today, the Scars Remain. (2024)

THE PUNGENT STAIN of a stranger’s burnt flesh seeped into the passenger seat of his Toyota Tundra as Kekoa Lansford drove toward his girlfriend’s apartment on the dark early morning of August 9, 2023. He parked and stumbled into her living room, wearing shorts, a Hawaiian Special Forces tank top, and melted flip-flops. She lived in a safe zone, six miles north of the inferno that only hours earlier had turned his hometown of Lahaina, on the northwest coast of Maui, into a living hell.

His girlfriend, Dani Fravega, a painter and tattoo artist, put her hand on his chest. At six feet three inches tall, he stood nearly as high as the flammable guinea grass brought to the island by European cattle ranchers in the 19th century. It crawled between slopes and roads around Lahaina, swiftly bursting into flames in what would become one of the deadliest wildfires in the U.S. in more than a century. Kekoa, 36, was built like a barrel of bourbon, and his bald head shined with sweat. Particles of ash stuck to his skin. His beard smelled of smoke. He had always exuded an air of invincibility, but now he looked completely sapped. He would not be okay after this. No one from Lahaina would.

Kekoa’s heart hammered. “I can’t f*cking think or breathe right now,” he told Dani. In the coming days, his heart would race so abnormally fast that doctors would have to perform a cardioversion, using medicine and electric shocks to restore it to normal. Dani could not comprehend what Kekoa had seen over the past ten hours. And he could not yet begin to describe it.

“Take a deep breath,” she said to him, tapping ice to his forehead. But Kekoa struggled to calm down or shake off the sounds that followed him: A grown man crying for his mother. Cars exploding. People screaming as they burned alive. He had not been able to save them all.

THE WINDS

THE MORNING BEFORE, on August 8, it was ferociously hot and windy. Already the air smelled of parched weeds. Kekoa had been up since 7:00 a.m. attempting to gather coconuts, which he sold to tourists on Front Street—a popular area lined with shops and restaurants—for $10 to $15 a pop. He checked on his coconut supply, which he had stacked in a kiddie pool in his yard—a modest yard with Italian cypress trees and plumerias with white and pink flowers. He had inherited the simple white house at 489 Ilikahi Street, with its slate-colored shingles and covered front patio, from his grandmother. He noticed the wind had pulled the plastic pool out from beneath the coconuts, leaving them scattered across his property.

These particular gusts, known to locals as the Kaua’ula winds, were so powerful they could send 3,000-pound dumpsters soaring. On this day, they were exacerbated by Hurricane Dora, a category 4 storm brewing in the Pacific Ocean. The Kaua’ula winds did not arrive often. Once, more than 70 years ago, they destroyed the towering steeple of a historic Lahaina church, right near Kekoa’s home. These winds alone could flatten a town.

Kekoa headed northeast, up Lahainaluna Road, to check on weather conditions. He was about a mile from his home when he saw smoke. At 6:36 a.m., residents had reported flames in a field thick with overgrown, highly flammable grass along that same road. Power lines, he later learned, had toppled from the wind, igniting a three-acre brush fire. The area was in a drought, with already combustible conditions compounded by the wind and the soaring temperatures brought on by climate change.

Rotating fire crews doused the flames with 23,000 gallons of water, until the ground smoldered. The situation seemed under control, and by 9:00 a.m. the fire department had declared the flames extinguished, the blaze “100 percent contained.” But the winds did not let up.

By 2:18 p.m., the fire crews had climbed into their trucks and left the Lahainaluna Road site. They had spent nearly seven hours tackling the fire there and seemed certain it was out. The morning’s wildfire area was now charred but not ablaze. They returned to the station to rest and eat lunch.

Meanwhile, a Hawaiian Electric Company emergency crew went to the area to make repairs. Not long after arriving, the crew spotted smoke and flames in the same field where the morning fire had started. Fire experts know that embers can hide in ash pits and obscure crannies, only to reignite hours, days, or even weeks later. They can travel up to five miles away in high winds, setting an entirely different area aflame. The power crew and neighbors called 911 to report the brush fire. It was just before 3:00 p.m.

In his Tundra, Kekoa had by now driven a mile north along the Lahaina shoreline to check on his son at his ex’s home in the neighborhood of Wahikuli. It seemed safe so far, so he headed back into Lahaina, cutting up a dirt road that overlooked Lahainaluna Road and the town below. In an instant, from his vantage point atop the hill, Kekoa heard the bone-rattling howl of the powerful Kaua’ula winds. They roared and thundered through valleys, rocking buildings and cars, and ripping roofs from houses. The winds inhaled the wildfire, sucking its smoke plumes into a vortex before changing directions and shooting a Godzilla-like jet stream straight into Lahaina. A tsunami of smoke descended upon Kekoa’s neighborhood. He watched from above as residents stood on their roofs, trying to escape the flames, their homes burning around them. They could not outrun the fire. Kekoa saw it all. His own house, he knew, had also been incinerated.

Below him, officers patrolling Lahaina had begun to realize the terrifying magnitude of the fast-moving fires. Police body-camera footage would show them spraying a spot fire with a garden hose, waiting for firefighters as plumes of brown smoke billowed above. Officers ran through the smoke-filled streets yelling at people to leave. Still no official evacuation order had gone out.

At first, from above the scene, Kekoa thought, Thank God I got out of there. Because of the high winds, there were no helicopters pouring water down below. All around, he saw people running, falling, crying, screaming. To him it felt like the town had its own heartbeat, pounding, pounding. It was the sound of a place running for its life.

He called his son’s mother. When she picked up the phone, Kekoa was frantic. He told her the wildfire was completely out of control.

“It’s not going to come over here,” she told him.

“Bruh, this f*cker is moving,” he said. “Just to be careful, grab him. Now. Go!”

But he could tell she didn’t understand how serious this was. Neither she nor anyone around her had gotten any notice to leave. It would be at least another three hours before police began evacuating residents from Wahikuli.

Kekoa’s instincts told him Wahikuli was next. He headed down the back roads toward the neighborhood, passing cars along the way. He heard propane tanks exploding behind him. Boom. Boom. Were cars exploding, too? Car belts. Gas pistons. Engines. And blasts that sounded like ammo. Ping. Ping. Ping. Aluminum popping.

He made it to his ex-wife’s neighborhood and began beeping his horn at neighbors: “You guys gotta get the f*ck out of here right now!” They could hear the explosions all the way in Wahikuli. Some were already leaving. Traffic started to clog.

“It’s time to move,” Kekoa yelled.

He drove up to a gated off-road owned by private developers. The gate was open. Someone had already cut the lock. “Come up this way.” Residents began streaming out through the back roads, away from the burning neighborhoods.

His ex and their son made it out. But Kekoa turned around. He had left his dog, Rudy, a pit bull, at home. Even though he knew his neighborhood was annihilated, he believed Rudy would be okay. “He’s like Houdini,” Kekoa says: able to escape anywhere. But he also could not stop thinking about his neighbors. So many still trapped.

If I can navigate this and use my brain, I should be okay, Kekoa told himself. I can help a couple of people. It was just before 5:00 p.m. He turned back toward Lahaina, straight toward the flames.

HELL ON EARTH

KEKOA RACED THROUGH a hail of embers, thousands of pieces of wood shooting through the sky like spears dipped in fire. The air crackled. Power poles down everywhere. He assumed the lines still had electricity pulsing through them. He avoided them, making it half a mile away, close to an old restaurant on Front Street, where patrons used to watch whales and enjoy ocean sunsets.

Out of the smoke came a woman, stumbling. Kekoa spotted her immediately and slowed. People started beeping their horns. He could see that her feet were burned. Kekoa called the woman into his truck. She got in and he whipped the truck around, shooting back up Honoapi’ilani Highway, driving on roadsides to the evacuation shelter at the Lahaina Civic Center. He dropped her off to wait for an ambulance. Then he turned around and went back.

This time, Kekoa spotted another woman not far from the restaurant, her back and legs badly burned. He picked her up and sat her in his back seat. She screamed in pain. “You’ll be okay,” he said.

He drove back toward the civic center and dropped her at an ambulance. Her burned skin left a layer of pink pasty film on his seat. He turned his truck around again. Before he could make it into the smoke, more people stumbled out of it. He lost track of how many. People jumping in and out of his truck, desperate to get as far away from the flames as possible.

As the emergency operations center remained out of touch with what was actually unfolding on the ground, Kekoa continued shuttling burn victims and other survivors two miles north to the civic center. He went back into the smoke again. He parked less than a block away from the same area as before. He could hear people yelling for help. He got out of his truck and started walking toward them.

He breathed in the smoke and felt the heat pressing onto his feet through his flip-flops, like stepping on a bed of nails. He spotted another woman, barely walking and badly burned. He put her over his shoulder. She was heavy. Kekoa already suffered from gout in one foot. He stumbled. Another man nearby helped him as he attempted to carry the woman to his truck. Kekoa kneeled to the ground trying to steady himself. In seconds, smoke surrounded him. He could not see his way back. It was totally dark. No way out.

Kekoa had never been a religious man. He had never been any portrait of morality or virtue, and certainly not the hero type. He had made mistakes, poor decisions. In 2019, after he saw a police officer “manhandle” his girlfriend, he hit him hard enough that the officer’s glasses broke. “I messed up,” Kekoa said in court. “It won’t happen again.” The judge ordered him to take anger-management classes.

Today, however, he prayed. Oh God, don’t let me die. Please. I’ll never do drugs again. Please.

Just then, a tiny opening peeked through the depths of darkness. It was just big enough for him to see a path out.

He made one more trip to the civic center before driving to Dani’s around 9:00 p.m. He tried to rest and calm down, but it was impossible. Kekoa left her apartment around 2:00 a.m., this time bringing his cousin and nephew with him to see if they could find any more survivors. They encountered a man and a woman with three cats in a cage who had survived all this time in the ocean. Kekoa recognized them. They were the parents of a friend of his. They climbed into his truck. On the road out, the winds started to pick up again. A pole came crashing down. If it had hit his truck, they all would have been crushed to death.

Still pumping with adrenaline, Kekoa got the couple to safety, gave up the mission, and returned to Dani’s. Then, after the sun rose, he got into his truck again and drove back into Lahaina on his own. By now the fire had burned all the way down to the ocean, fuming out. He had to see what was left.

Walking through the blackened town, still empty and untended, he encountered a local television journalist. On camera, Kekoa unleashed an emotional plea. “We’ve still got dead bodies,” he said. “In the water. Floating. And on the sea wall. We’ve been pulling people out since last night, trying to save people’s lives. And I feel like we’re not getting the help we need.”

Kekoa put his face in his hands, breaking. The fire, which burned more than 2,100 acres in Lahaina and another 4,500 acres across the rest of the island, would not be declared 100 percent contained for 51 days. In the months that followed, Kekoa would only continue to crumble. “This is a nationwide issue,” he said, his voice trembling as he shouted into the camera. “We need help. A lot of help.”

WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS

TODAY, JUST OVER a year later, memories of the fire curl into his consciousness without warning, like cascades of smoke, overtaking everything, everywhere. Kekoa has spent the past 12 months trying to breathe, recover, sleep. He wheezes. “I just get winded quicker,” he says. Ever since the fires, he’s had a chronic cough. “It’s kind of scary. It just comes out of nowhere,” he says. “And then I feel like I have this impending doom sometimes, for no reason.”

Many of Maui’s survivors, like Kekoa, are still in a very dark place, even as the tourists swing golf clubs on lush green oceanside courses, steps from the towering hotels that still house people who lost their homes in the flames. Life here feels incongruent. In one resort, which long served as a Red Cross shelter and is now open to guests, there are reminders about family popcorn and movie nights on the lawn, alongside flyers for Hui Kāne, a weekly support group for men impacted by the fires.

Kekoa feels like the world has forgotten about Lahaina and what his people have gone through. The historic town experienced the most devastation from the fires, which killed 102 people, displaced at least 8,000, and resulted in billions of dollars in damage. A severe housing shortage existed on the island long before the fires, but health and housing issues are now reaching a breaking point. Displaced survivors were living in 40 hotels on the island in the days immediately after their homes were destroyed. Since this summer, however, evacuees have been relocating out of hotels and into other temporary homes at a rate of more than 200 people a week. For most, housing and job concerns have taken precedence over their own mental health. But the issues are entwined, as a lack of stability and the struggle to fulfill basic needs fuel depression and anxiety.

In a study that aims to track at least 1,000 Maui wildfire survivors over a ten-year period, more than half of the survivors surveyed so far have reported symptoms of depression, and nearly half have reported worsening health problems, including high blood pressure and respiratory issues. Nearly one third of them have moderate to severe anxiety, and about 4.4 percent have had recent thoughts of committing suicide. The study also reveals that 13 percent of survivors do not have health insurance, exacerbated by the fact that nearly half of them lost their jobs in the fires, and 20 percent were still unemployed as of February 2024. Almost half of the households affected by the wildfires are experiencing low food security. Yet this past May, Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency ended its program to provide meals to survivors still living in hotels.

No one simply snaps back to normal after a catastrophic weather-related event. Not even those who made it out uninjured, or who did not lose homes, or whose loved ones did not die. Maui received $17.3 million in federal funding for mental health assistance in the wake of the wildfires, which has gone toward the support of door-to-door wellness navigators in hotel shelters, telepsychiatry and counseling services, group healing services, and the hiring of more behavioral health clinicians and providers.

But Lahaina has only one behavioral health clinic left standing, and there was already a shortage of psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists across Hawaii. At least three other clinics that provided mental health services were destroyed by the flames, along with private practices. That lone remaining location, tucked near tennis courts and the community center on a hill overlooking the ocean, has become a go-to hub for families needing psychological assistance. But even with access to a funded clinic with a friendly staff, there is a reluctance among residents to seek mental health services, partly due to the cultural stigma or to denial, or because other needs, like housing, are so great and people are just trying to survive day by day.

SURVIVAL MODE

AFTER THE NEWS video of Kekoa went viral, someone set up a GoFundMe page for him. People sent $18,000 in donations. But Kekoa felt survivor’s guilt, thinking of the families whose loved ones did not make it out alive. He thought of the people he had not been able to save. Parents, grandparents, children, siblings. He says he sent the donations he received to their families.

Since the fires, Kekoa hasn’t been able to find steady work—his coconut business evaporated. He has been living with Dani, but her lease will be up soon and the rent is increasing. He tried to build two tiny houses on the gravel lot where his home once stood. But he ran into red tape. Government rules, he says, will not allow the tiny homes on the lot, though they will let him put an RV on his land. However, Kekoa is a big dude and could not imagine cramming into an RV with his girlfriend and son. “It’s like they have all these rules for us, but they don’t have any answers for us.” The stress of everything, he says, is “probably cutting 20 years off my life.”

It took four months for Kekoa to take Dani to see the burn zone. He still hadn’t told her about all he had seen. When they arrived, she just started crying profusely. The devastation had not really hit her until that moment. But for Kekoa, every fiery image—each person he carried to safety and each body he could not—is burned inside his brain. He lost everything in the fires—photos, all his paperwork, his birth certificate, his grandma’s antique silverware set from the Royal Hawaiian Kingdom. He never did find his dog. “I think he just cooked to oblivion.”

Before the fires, Kekoa did not struggle with his mental health. Now, he says, the depression is real. “Sometimes I get self-pity,” he says. “Like ‘Oh, I’m by myself in the world.’ ” He manages to pull himself out of it. He’ll go outside. Run into a neighbor, a loved one, a kind soul, people in his community working so hard to rebuild and recover. “Everybody loves everybody, you know?”

Kekoa has not gone to any group support meetings himself, but he likes the idea for other survivors. He has not sought treatment at the Lahaina behavioral clinic or from any therapist, for that matter. “I would make them go crazy,” he says. His burden is too much. “I just don’t deal with my own mental health. I have an ex-wife, and I have a girlfriend and a son. Everybody’s mental health,” he says, “I carry.”

Alika Maunakea, Ph.D., a professor at the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa, who coauthored the wildfire survivor study, says there tend to be more female than male survivors of the Maui wildfires utilizing the free health screenings. And even when women come in with their partners, the guys typically don’t participate in them. “It does speak to avoidance—they either don’t want to know their results or they don’t want to worry their families about it,” he says. “It’s ironic because these men who avoid care for the sake of caring for their families only end up making it harder for their families in the long run.”

At the Lahaina Behavioral Health Clinic, part of the Hawai’i Department of Health’s Adult Mental Health Division, program manager John Oliver says the doors are open for survivors, like Kekoa, who may only now be starting to emerge from the aftermath and realize how much they need mental health support. Lahaina, whose name means “cruel” or “merciless” sun in Native Hawaiian, is known for its dry, hot climate. But there is a particular kind of mercilessness that the people of Lahaina now understand, too: the way the fire’s trauma can take hold of the mind and not let go.

“I NEED HELP”

SCIENTISTS PREDICT THAT by the end of the century, the risk of wildfires could increase by as much as 57 percent worldwide due to climate change, potentially leading to more people seeing their neighborhoods go up in flames. Mental and physical health in the face of rising climate anxiety and trauma need serious global attention, and the World Health Organization is urging countries to integrate mental health care into their policy responses to climate change. But so far, according to its survey of 95 countries, only nine have included mental health support in their plans.

To build more prepared and resilient communities that can better withstand climate disasters, Maunakea says Maui, and the rest of the world, might take guidance from the “wraparound” services that were established to support survivors of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In the federal World Trade Center Health Program, they receive regular yearly mental and physical health checkups. Case management teams partner with social workers and clinicians to ensure that survivors are getting proper care, and to follow up with those who’ve moved away. This integrated health and tracking system continues today.

“Like 9/11, we’re going to need a similar type of specialized care for survivors from these kinds of tragedies,” Maunakea says. Not only to address the trauma, he explains, but also to screen for environmental exposures and the physical and mental repercussions of natural disasters like wildfires, from cancer to heart problems to depression.

But what happens when survivors don’t want to take advantage of these resources? In Lahaina, 38 percent of the population identifies as Asian American and 8.5 percent as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Suicide is the leading cause of death for Asian Americans aged 15 to 25 and the second leading cause of death in this population between ages 25 and 34. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders aged 15 to 34. Yet there is often a reluctance to seek services for mental health or substance abuse in these communities.

Kekoa has witnessed this firsthand. He’s encountered survivors around Lahaina who find it more comfortable to “talk story,” as locals call it, with him. “What would you do if the thoughts in your head are consuming your life? You get help. What do you do if you get diabetes, you get brain cancer, you break your foot? You get help,” Kekoa says. For the mind’s health, “there’s no difference. There’s no shame. It’s all love.” And yet for all his words of encouragement when it comes to others seeking mental health support, he has yet to take his own advice. He adds: “I just don’t want to.”

To combat the stigma and denial, local governments must respect the cultural nuances of their communities by having a plan to communicate through language differences and promote culturally relevant healing practices, like spiritual sharing circles and meditation. The combination of these practices and modern counseling services can make a significant difference in alleviating the physical and mental suffering of survivors. But it takes time to implement a program like this—time that’s of the essence, as natural disasters have been linked to an increased risk of self-harm and suicide even years following the event and as mental health assistance programs eventually expire—and it’s much harder to do in the immediate aftermath of a disaster.

Oliver recalls one Asian American man who fled the fires by jumping into the ocean, where he survived for six hours with severe burns on his legs and other parts of his body, only to end up in a shelter after his release from the hospital. For months he couldn’t relax and had trouble sleeping and participating in normal activities. Still, he didn’t seek treatment. On a recent day, however, he showed up to the Lahaina behavioral health clinic. He walked past the plumeria tree blooming with pink petals and through the doors. He approached the front desk and quietly told the clerk, “I need help.”

THE HEART OF LAHAINA

KEKOA'S MOTHER DIED when he was born. Her mom, Kekoa’s grandma, raised him as if he were her son. She used to poke his belly, pinching it. “What is this?” she joked. “Can I have some of this?”

His grandmother, from whom he inherited his house, passed away at age 84, eight months before the fires leveled Lahaina. She was a Filipina and Spanish woman who made leis of feathers, orchids, and dried banana fibers, carefully braiding and twisting the garlands by hand. She gave them as symbols of honor, peace, and love to her Lahaina neighbors for graduations, weddings, and other celebrations. Native Hawaiian women would joke to Kekoa, “Your grandma is more Hawaiian than me.” Her husband was a Native Hawaiian who showed his love for his grandkids by teaching them the stories that had been passed down to him.

One family legend that Kekoa has never forgotten is about his great-grandfather, a Native Hawaiian whom he resembles. Many years ago, a school in Lahaina caught fire. Kekoa’s great-grandfather ran inside and saved the people from the flames.

All Kekoa ever wanted was to put respect on his ancestors’ names. His grandparents worked multiple jobs in Maui’s tourist and service industry to support six children and pay for their home, which was now in ruins. Kekoa’s grandmother often volunteered to cook meals for the Canoe Club, showing her love through her actions. “What you get from me here is in what I do,” she told him. “I cannot talk this. But I do this.” Kekoa thought of how hard they worked for their home. If his grandma had been alive to watch the destruction of her beloved Lahaina, it would have destroyed her.

But she was there. Kekoa felt her, along with his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, and his father’s father—a World War II veteran who served on Iwo Jima. “Men of action,” Kekoa says. He sensed all of their spirits kicking in. Taking over his own actions.

He talked to his ancestors that day. And if, God forbid, another fire happened, he would do it again, with their strength holding him. He thinks about Lahaina, his roots here, all the men he grew up with, learned from. Men who have it in their DNA to take care of their people. “The toughest f*cking guys I know,” he says. “This is our community. We’re from Lahaina. We don’t leave people behind. We just don’t roll like that.”

This article appears in the September/October issue of Men's Health.

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