Saskatoon couple witnesses Hawaii wildfire

A Saskatoon couple spent more than 40 hours on the side of a road in Hawaii as a deadly wildfire raged in the distance.

Keith Willoughby and his wife were in the midst of a 13-day holiday in Maui.

"The first nine days were absolutely incredible and blissful," Willoughby told CTV News.

The first sign of trouble came on Aug. 8 after a power outage in Kapalua, where the couple was staying.

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The resort is roughly 14 kilometres from Lahaina, the historic city ravaged by a deadly wildfire that claimed at least 111 lives with the death toll still mounting.

Willoughby said the night before, they could hear the "huge wind storms" fueled by Hurricane Dora, the same gusts credited with increasing the intensity of the devastating fire.

With the power out, the couple decided to eat lunch in Kahului in the central part of the island.

"We thought the power will be restored, in a typical Saskatchewan context, maybe in a few hours," Willoughby said.

While driving back, looking in the direction of Lahaina, the couple witnessed the first signs of the unfolding disaster.

"We saw the huge plumes of smoke," Willoughby said.

"We also then saw the fireball beginning to emerge."

Concerned about running out of gas, the couple circled back to Kahului. After filling up, they headed in the direction of Lahaina and found police barricades.

"In Saskatchewan, it's always easy to get somewhere because there's a huge grid system of highways and byways across the province," Willoughby said.

"In west Maui, there's one highway in and one highway out, so we were really stranded there."

The hours of waiting stretched on for the couple as the wildfire raged in the distance.

"We were beginning to see that this was an extreme situation," Willoughby said.

The couple ended up spending two days on the side of the road, stranded with other tourists. They spent another night in an evacuation shelter.

"Our suffering is minor compared to what the people in Maui have gone through who've lost lives, family members, friends, businesses, buildings and basically the entire community of Lahaina being destroyed," Willoughby said.

When the couple finally returned to their rental unit days later to collect their things, the power was still out.

"I just had the light of my iPhone to basically stumble around our rental unit and pick up the belongings that we had and then run back out into the shuttle bus, because they gave us just a few minutes to scramble and get our belongings," Willoughby said.

Willoughby said the shuttle bus travelled through Lahaina and what he saw was "horrific."

"I could see and smell the after-effects of the fire, the terrible tragedy, the real scene of terrible suffering that had occurred in Lahaina just two days earlier," Willoughby said.

"To see that pretty much all destroyed is quite emotional."

The couple was able to leave on their scheduled flight and return home.

While he is still processing what happened, Willoughby said he saw kindness in the "chaos."

"We would see individuals from the area, residents coming through and passing out bottles of water, snack packs, toiletry items, toothpaste — even if you had a pet in your vehicle, they were distributing snacks and treats for your pets," he said.

"That was a real tremendous indication of humanity, that even though the Hawaiian people themselves were suffering, they wanted to reach out to complete strangers and alleviate some of the challenges they were going through."