Another interview of Lahaina fire survivor

Previously I posted about an interview with Lahaina fire survivor named Lonnie:

Roads were blocked to trap people in Lahaina Hawaii?

Here is another interview with a man named Ed, about what happened in Lahaina, Hawaii:

Ed was going from north to south on Honoapillani Highway. The police blocked the highway and directed him to Front Street. He saw a small grass fire and thought that was the cause of blocking the highway. After a while, everyone was trapped on Front Street and the fire started burning down Lahaina. He went through a yard and a sidewalk, got on the highway again(ignoring the police and violating traffic laws), and went home safely.

...
Interviewer:
Ed, please tell us a little bit about what happened, where you were, the morning the day this fire started and what you experienced.

Ed:
I was in my truck going to check on some customers' properties and all of a sudden all the roads were being blocked off right in front of me and I, from the cops, and I would go to the next street and that would be blocked off and the next one, and they just blocked everything off, forced everybody down on Front Street in which,.. then the flames were coming over our vehicles, not on our vehicles but the flames were coming over top of our vehicles.

Interviewer:
What street were you on at this point in time?

Ed:
Front Street

Interviewer:
You were on Front Street itself.

Ed:
Yeah.

Interviewer:
So you got directed onto Front Street?

Ed:
Yeah.

Interviewer:
Where did you start when you started this journey?

Ed:
I was going down the highway and they blocked it off and wouldn't let me go any further.

Interviewer:
So you were coming from La Nia Poco?

Ed:
No. I was coming from Waikuli.

Interviewer:
Okay. So you were heading south and...

Ed:
They stopped us from going up on the bypass, then they wouldn't let me go past the bypass to the other exits to go up there... Then all of a sudden they said everybody's up get off this highway, go down this way, down into town, then they started blocking everything off there. And then you were down on Front Street and I got all the way down to Safeway.

Interviewer:
So you got corralled onto Front Street.

Ed:
Yes.

Interviewer:
You started on Honoapiinali Highway and you ended up on Front Street.

Ed:
Yes. I couldn't go anywhere. They just said go north, go north, go north... So, we were all in a line trying to get to the end of Front Street to go north like they told us to, not knowing that the police blocked off the end of Front Street so nobody could move. And then, everybody panicked and, everybody went up on the sidewalks and through yards, took out the other lane, all of a sudden nobody could move anywhere. So, All I did was to try to inch my way over to another yard and drive up through a sidewalk, come back around, and then I went, the cops were moving around one exit, so I ended up getting up on the highway even though they trying to direct me another way, and hightailed it to home.
...

Interviewer:
During the whole time you were down on Front Street, you were in that area, did you see anybody fighting a fire? Did you see any firetrucks?

Ed:
No, but the fire was still above the highway.

Interviewer:
Okay. So, at this point, it was not in Lahaina town. It was up in Lahainaluna.

Ed:
Yeah. And, at the beginning of that little journey I could look up when I tried to go up the bypass, the first, you know, the main entrance, I could see the fire. It was on the side of the highway up on the bypass. And that's why they blocked us off. I understood that.

Interviewer:
Yeah. It makes sense.

Ed:
That made a lot of sense... I mean, it was just a small grass fire on the highway, nothing there. It wasn't even the trees. I don't know what kicked it up to that magnitude like that.
...