Immigrant workers' lives, livelihoods and documents in limbo after the Hawaii fire
CTV
Freddy Tomas was working in his yard in Lahaina when the fire advanced with stunning speed right up to his fence. He rushed to save valuables from a safe inside his house but realized he didn't have time and fled, his face blackened with soot.
Freddy Tomas was working in his yard in Lahaina when the fire advanced with stunning speed right up to his fence. He rushed to save valuables from a safe inside his house but realized he didn't have time and fled, his face blackened with soot.
Days after fleeing in his pickup truck, amid smoke so thick he could only follow the red taillights of the vehicle in front of him and pray they were going the right way, the retired hotel worker from the Philippines returned to his destroyed home with his son to look for the safe. Tomas, 65, said it had contained passports, naturalization papers, other important documents and US$35,000.
After sifting through the ashes, father and son found the safe, but it had popped open in the fire, whipped by hurricane-force winds, and its contents were incinerated.
For immigrants like Tomas, Lahaina was an oasis, with nearly double the foreign-born population of the U.S. mainland. Now, those workers are trying to piece their lives back together after the Aug. 8 fire levelled the town.
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