A Bethesda native who now calls Maui home says she spent hours in the ocean waiting to be rescued after jumping in to avoid the wildfires.
Annalise Cochran said about eight hours expired between when she fled her apartment building in Lahaina and when she was picked up and rescued by firefighters.
“I would say five of those hours at least, I was fully submerged in the ocean,” she said.
She and those she evacuated with would try to climb up on the rocks when they could.
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“At some point in the night, we got so cold from just laying in the ocean motionless that we ended up actually having to climb back over the rock wall and go and huddle near the fires so that we could actually warm our bodies,” Cochran said.
She lost her house and car, and one of the neighbors she evacuated with died, but Cochran said she’s doing well. Currently, she’s staying at War Memorial shelter in Wailuku with other displaced member of the Lahaina community.
“I’m feeling very blessed to have my life and to have the community that we still have here in Lahaina and a family to go back home to, which I know is a lot more than some people get to say today,” she said. “So, I’m grateful for what I have.”
She encourages people to think about safety and how to protect themselves.
“We were unfortunate … not to have the support that you would expect in a situation like this, of having an evacuation text or having a firefighter come rescue you early into the fire, and it made me realize that I was very reliant on my personal skills,” she said.
She wants people to think about what natural disasters would look like where they live and think ahead about how to stay safe in an emergency.
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