Only three hours before she found herself huddled in the Pacific Ocean, a barrage of embers and ash hurtling above her, Chelsea Denton Fuqua was lounging in bed with a fan, a pristine blue sky outside the window of her home that lies half a mile from the Lahaina waterfront on the Hawaiian island of Maui.
It was moments later when she caught a glimpse of smoke in the distance. At first, it was a wisp, but within minutes it had grown thicker, rippling down the hillside on violent winds.
Denton Fuqua, 32, and her husband were worried. They had received no text alerts, no sirens, no evacuation orders — no sign for her and her neighbors, she said, that Lahaina, a community of 13,000 that was once the capital of the Hawaiian kingdom, was on the cusp of incineration.