ISSAQUAH, Wash — As the death toll continues to climb following the deadly wildfire in Maui, an Issaquah woman recounts having to stay in a hotel pool for hours to survive the blaze.
Kristina Lee-Garrido is back to her life in Issaquah, still processing surviving last week’s deadly fire that decimated Lahaina.
“It was definitely a surreal experience,” said Lee-Garrido.
Lee-Garrido and her best friend were visiting the island on vacation. Last Tuesday, they woke up with no power or internet due to winds from Hurricane Dora, and locals told them to get inside for safety.
A couple of hours later, their condo filled with thick black smoke and they had to escape.
“It was definitely not what we expected when we opened the door. We didn't know where the fire was. That was the biggest issue and since there was no early warning it seemed like it was all around us,” Lee-Garrido said.
The two knew how to find that pool and had no other choice than to get in for survival.
“It was a raging wildfire. We had an inferno in the pool with us. We were picking things out of our skin at the time and had ash all in our eyes and our ears,” Lee-Garrido said.
They had no cellphone service and Lee-Garrido said the SOS feature on her friend’s iPhone saved their lives. It was able to connect them to EMS through satellite.
“They told us not to move. We will ping you with the satellite, and they did every 15 minutes. The EMS person, which I'd love to meet someday, would tell us what to do and we just did it. We just stayed put,” Lee-Garrido said.
They stayed in the pool for three hours while fires raged around them. It would be around 8 p.m. Tuesday night that three firefighters would rescue them and soon learn the rest of the town was engulfed in flames.
“They drove through fire for us and I saw houses on fire. We went through fences, we went over embankments in the rearview mirror, I thought I could see one of the tires on fire,” Lee-Garrido said.
Lee-Garrido and her friend were then taken to a shelter. It wouldn’t be until she made it home Saturday that she saw the scope of what she survived.
That was when I realized that I almost died. That I almost was incinerated when I got home and I looked at the news because we did not have any communication with anyone in the outside world for really, legitimately 72 hours,” Lee-Garrido said.
Lee-Garrido is thankful to be home and alive.
“Very, very fortunate. There are angels among us. There's four of them on Maui that I would love to thank someday with some kind of medal,” Lee-Garrido said.