Fire destroys Wainaku home

Fire crews responded Saturday morning to a fully-involved house fire in Wainaku.

Fire crews responded Saturday morning to a fully-involved house fire in Wainaku.

Hawaii Fire Department Battalion Chief Matthias Kusch said according to information he’d received, no lives were lost when the home at 375 Ohai St. went up in flames.

“To our knowledge, there was nobody inside,” Kusch said.

He said the Hawaii Police Department had identified a woman thought to have been inside when the fire started about 8 a.m. Two neighbors told the Tribune-Herald they had seen a man come out of the house as well.

The Police Department could not immediately be reached to confirm how many people might have been in the house. The cause of the fire is unknown, Kusch said, but HFD’s prevention chief will start an investigation.

When crews first arrived, flames were emitting from all sides of the house. In that situation, Kusch said, crews are not sent in for a rescue operation because “at that point, it is incompatible with life on the interior.”

“We went to what we call a defensive attack,” Kusch said. That means crews work to contain the fire to its place of origin. Hydrants at both ends of Ohai Street were used, with the street closed to through traffic.

Four fire companies comprising 21 personnel were called to the scene along with members of the HPD.

Videos taken by neighbors show sheets of orange flames pouring from the windows and a thick plume of smoke rising into the sky.

The flames were quelled shortly before 9 a.m. but the interior of the house was gutted by the fire. The roof had collapsed in two places as crews continued to hose down the exterior.

Kusch and multiple neighbors interviewed said the dwelling was known as a squatters’ house and that drug activity was common there.

Neighbor Donald Medeiros lives just mauka of the destroyed house and sustained smoke damage to his own property. He 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. Aiona and Medeiros both called dispatch upon seeing the fire.

“I could just hear crackling,” Aiona said. “I looked out the window and I could see flames.”

Gabe Keolanui lives on nearby Lehua Street and said he came down to see what was going on around 8:10 a.m., after hearing what he said sounded like an explosion.

“I thought it was a car backing into something,” he said. The fire itself “was not as bad when I first got here,” Keolanui said. As he watched, he saw “flames roaring out … it was fully engulfed.”

Amber Lopez, who lives across the street, said she also heard a loud noise. Her young daughter told her it couldn’t have been fireworks because “It’s after New Year’s.”

The house has no running water and no power, Lopez said.

“There’s no electricity, nothing, in there,” Medeiros said. He said he reached out to the Hawaii County Council and the Police Department about the house before.

Kusch said the house had caught fire “at least one other time” before Saturday.

Crews from the county Department of Public Works arrived later in the morning with an excavator. Fire personnel had not been able to enter the house because it was too unstable.

“We’re going to dismantle the home so that we can further extinguish and make assessments,” Kusch said.

County property tax records show that the 1,928-square-foot home was built in 1938 and is owned by William and Marietta Wallace. It is classified as an apartment building and has five bedrooms. A mailing address in Sheridan, Ark., is listed for the Wallaces.

Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.