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Viral photo: House miraculously survives Hawaii wildfires

In the picture, it seems to be the only property that survived the devastating wildfires that claimed the lives of more than 100 people

Published: Tue 22 Aug 2023, 9:22 PM

Updated: Wed 23 Aug 2023, 7:33 AM

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Photo: AFP

Photo: AFP

Heartbreaking photos of houses reduced to ashes and charred vehicles have been making their way to social media since the fast-moving Hawaii wildfires started early this month. However, one particular picture has caught everyone’s attention. It is of a red-roofed house which appears to have escaped the blaze unscathed even as everything around it got burned.

The house is located on Front Street in Lahaina town, on the island of Maui. In the viral photo, it seems to be the only property that survived the devastating wildfires that claimed the lives of more than 100 people and wreaked havoc in Hawaii, according to media reports.

With its red roof and white walls, the two-story oceanfront property stands intact surrounded by piles of rubbles of the neighbouring houses. Even the garden area still looks green, which caused some to question if the photo was digitally manipulated.

How did the house escape the flames?

According to The Seattle Times, the owners of the house, Dora Atwater Millikin and her husband, were visiting their family in Massachusetts when the fire ignited. They had recently renovated their 100-year-old property, which was once home to the employees of a sugar plantation that operated in Lahaina in the mid-1800s.

The couple was aiming to restore some of the features of the old property but without the intention to make it fireproof.

“It’s a 100 per cent wood house so it’s not like we fireproofed it or anything,” Atwater Millikin was quoted as saying.

The asphalt roof of the house was replaced with heavy-gauge metal, stones were lined on the ground, and the foliage was removed. “We love old buildings, so we just wanted to honour the building. And we didn’t change the building in any way — we just restored it,” she said.

It is possible that these changes might have helped the house stay immune to the fire. Atwater Millikin said that when the fire started, burning pieces of fire were “floating through the air with wind and everything”.

“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,” she said.

According to Michael Wara, the director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at the Stanford Wood Institute for the Environment, it was the river stones placed by the owners around the house that saved the property.

“What folks in the wildfire business call the zone zero or the ember ignition zone, is kind of a key factor in whether homes do or do not burn down,” he told Honolulu Civil Beat.

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