Fire crews responded Saturday morning to a destructive house fire in Wainaku.
Fire crews responded Saturday morning to a destructive house fire in Wainaku.
Hawaii Fire Department battalion chief Matthias Kusch said that according to the information he’d received, no lives had been lost when 375 Ohai Street went up in flames.
The cause of the fire is unknown, Kusch said, but HFD’s prevention chief would be starting an investigation.
Kusch said that when crews first arrived, flames were emitting from all sides of the house.
”We went to what we call a defensive attack,” he said. Four fire companies comprising 21 personnel were called to the scene along with members of the Hawaii Police Department.
Videos taken by neighbors show sheets of orange flames pouring from the windows and a thick plume of smoke rising into the sky.
Kusch and multiple neighbors interviewed said the house was known as a squatters’ house and that drug activity was common there.
Neighbor Donald Medeiros, who lives mauka of the destroyed house and sustained smoke damage to his own property, said he had seen as many as 20 people at a time living in the home.
“It’s vacant, but there’s always people there,” said Cameron Aiona, who lives in the Riverside apartment building adjacent to the home. Both Aiona and Medeiros called dispatch on seeing the flames.
The fire broke out around 8 a.m. By 9 a.m., the flames had been quelled and the interior of the house gutted by the fire. The roof had collapsed in two places as crews continued to hose down the exterior.
Kusch said the house had caught fire “at least one other time” before Saturday.
Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.