Hey, it's Sabrina. This week, the daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year, listening back and then hearing what's happened in the time since they first ran. Today, the Fire the Devastated, Le'ha'ina, Hawaii in August, and one man's story of surviving it. It's Tuesday, December 26th. Hello? Hi, is this Idriss?

Yes, it is. Hi.

Idriss, thank you for taking the time to talk to us. I wonder, Idriss, if you could introduce your sofa me. Tell me your name, your age, where you live, and what your profession is.

My name is Idriss Noara, 32 years old. I lived on Street in Maui, Laina, and I was the manager a Hilton property of the Beach and Pool, I work in sales.

Got it. I wonder if you could start by telling us just from the beginning, how your day started?

Actually, it was my first true day off in a long time. I woke up in the middle of the night, which was Monday night, Tuesday morning, around 3:00 or 4:00 AM when we lost power. So it got pretty hot. So I opened up the windows and by the time I woke up around 6:00, 7:00 AM, I noticed we didn't have service neither.

Self service?

Yeah. Honestly, I was just annoyed. I was like, I've been waiting for this day forever and no power. We didn't even know it was a hurricane. We just thought it was windy.

And were you aware of the fire at that point?

Absolutely not. There was no fire in the morning that I was aware of. We had no warnings at all.

And.

So I.

Think it was around.

Noon or 1:00, one of my neighbors came and knocked on my door and he said, Hey, you need to come out and see this. So I came out and in front of my house, I have a little cottage behind my house. I could see a lot of smoke. So I called my cat. I have an outdoor cat, and I called her and I couldn't find her all day. And then I just gave up and I closed my door. And then my neighbor came back maybe an hour later and he said, there's another fire. And it was closer. It's actually the street behind us. And I have a scooter. So I actually went to go check out how close the fire was. And I got on Front Street, which is a street that goes along the ocean. And I see there's this restaurant up in Flames. And I saw people running straight in front of me. There's a medical center. And I remember actually seeing a lot of people trying to get in the medical center. Then behind me, there's a whole business on fire. It's like, holy. Everything was on fire. I didn't understand how things started to catch on fire.

It didn't make sense. And now I start to panic. So I went back to the neighbors, but the neighbors were all gone. I felt lost. And there was wind and there was trees falling down and I screamed for my cat. I saw her run out of the house and she didn't want to come out. I was panicking. Reality started and I was set in. I said, okay, maybe the safest place to be right now is here because I wouldn't even know where to go. I'm closing the door and about five minutes, everything turned black outside. And a medical center across the street was up inflamed to the sky. Oh, my God. I couldn't understand. I said, how? I just felt people like there was nothing. Five, ten minutes to go. And it really looks like someone put gasoline all over the building and he just took up and they make sense. It's just that makes sense. Like a stone building could burn so fast. I opened the door, still calling my cat, and I felt something burning on my shoulder. And it was debris like amber. And I look up in the sky and it's literally fire coming down the sky.

It was raining fire. And now I said, I have to get out of here. And so I got everything I could, all the necessities, clothes and wallet and pictures, or whatever, and put everything in two big bags. And I ran out of the house. And as I ran out of the house, there was smoke everywhere. And I saw one of my neighbors coughing. He was right in front of the house, and he was just coughing. And I said, What are you doing here? He's like, Oh, I went to the store. And I said, Okay, get on my scooter. So he came behind me on my scooter and the fire came from the uphill. It was coming down. So to me, the safest place that this fire is water. And so in the panic, I said, We have to go to the harbor. And then we get on Front Street. And on Front Street, I was just chaos. I could hear screams. And then I can see people, but I could hear them scream. It's scary screams. Screams of pain I've never heard before. They were clearly people burning your life. It was a deep pain and people throwing up.

And it was just it was horrifying. It was horrifying to hear that. I'm so glad I can see. It was black because there's so much smoke, but we could clearly hear them all around us. All around us. It felt like we were in hell.

We'll be right back.

The wind itself, the wind was a scary thing. The wind was so hot, it was burning our skin. It was so strong because everything was on fire. I told Damon, You got to tell me when to turn to the harbor because I can't see nothing. We finally got to the harbor and I left my scooter there and at the edge of the water on the harbor, there's a little house, it's called the Harbor Masters Hub. We had our back against the wall and we were facing the ocean and we're just waiting. We just didn't know what to do.

Did you say anything to him?

No, we were not talking. We didn't know. In my mind, I'm like, okay, we're going to wait here at least. We're not going to burn. That's what I was thinking. But a couple of minutes waiting there, I saw a shadow just run and jump in the water on the side of the house. I said, Damon, do you see this? We look in the water as a big kid bull just drowning in front of us. He had the big head and yellow eyes, and I didn't know I want to help him, but I didn't know if he was going to bite me or pull him with him in the water. I kept calling him and calling him, but he couldn't do it. He tried his best to do it, but he couldn't do it. I'll never forget the look he gave me in his eyes. He just gave up and his head went underwater. I told Damon to hold my feet and I took my shirt off. Somehow, I managed to grab about a collar and pulled him out and we tried to calm him down. He was just walking in circles. He was in panic mode.

Then I called the police and I said, Hey, we're on the harbor. We're stuck. You guys have to come get us. The lady was just didn't know what to say. She said, I'm sorry. We can't come get you. Everything was in and they were overwhelmed. I hung up. And I just remember seeing debris falling from the sky and our bags kept catching on fire. Miraculously, I saw on my phone I had one bar service. So I tried to call my best friend, Yassin, and I told my best friend, Hey, I love you. Tell everybody I love them. It's going to be okay. Here's my mom's number. Don't call her now. Wait. Let her sleep.

Were you preparing because you thought you might not make it?

Oh, yeah, we didn't think we were going to make it. And after I hung up with him, I called the police again, and she gave me the same answer. She said, I'm so sorry. And I could feel the frustration in her voice. She was just helpful. She didn't know. And I felt so bad for her because she probably had so many calls like this. And so I hung up again, and I was just frustrated. So at this point, I thought maybe I could get in the harbor messagehud the little house. Damon had a knife with him and he cut the screen off and I started punching the window with all my strength, all my strength. And so I fractured my hand. The window was so thick, it wouldn't even do anything. And so I called the police a third time. And I said, if you guys don't come right now, we're going to die. And she said, you guys have to jump in the water. And I said, no way. You guys want to jump in a hurricane at night with all this smoke. There's no way we can jump. The water was crazy. And she said, You have no choice.

You have to jump in the water. I hung up and I looked at Damon. I was like, we have to jump. Damon said, There's no way I'm jumping. I'm not jumping. I told him, Listen, either we burn or we drown. I waited a couple more minutes. I tried to convince him, and I said that I'm jumping. There were rocks maybe 100 feet away or 150 feet. I found he made it. I looked back and I screamed at Damon, and he was just terrified. He was next to the dog. I told him jump and I kept screaming and he just didn't want to. I could see him hanging on to the harbor with half his body in the water. I kept screaming, You need to let go. You need to let go. He screamed, My shoes are too heavy. I just made the decision to jump and go get him. So I got back in the water and I got back next to him. I tried to go and take his shoes off, but I couldn't even find his feet. The ocean was just pushing him against the wall. And I told him, you have to follow me.

I see.

And the way he was swimming, I said, there's no way he's going to make it. He was just struggling, just swelling water and coughing. And somehow he managed to get very close to the rock and I pulled him up. He's overweight and he's older. But it was a miracle. And we still had debris falling on us and we had waves just coming over us. We were holding onto the rocks to not get pulled or stuck in by the ocean. It was just a nightmare. And then I heard a dog screaming. I was like, I have to go back and I jumped back in the water. I tried to get back on the harbor. He was laying against the wall with his eyes closed and just screaming. There's no way I could care him. It was a big pit bull, and my hand was fractured or broken. So if I try to grab him in the water, he's already freaked out. We're both going to drown. He's going to die for sure, and I'm probably not going to make it. So in one of my bags, I had a blanket and I dipped it in the ocean five or six times, and I put it on top of the dog.

That's all I could do. I took one of my bags and I jumped back in the ocean, and then I almost drowned. I was just so exhausted and I panic halfway. And I was praying to God. He's helped me. And I thank God I made it to the jetty and I went back on the other side and I talked to Damian and he was not answering. Grab his hand and he just held my hand. He was just in shock. And then maybe an hour after that, I saw light far away and I told Damian, I said, hey, I think there's a boat over there. And we're screaming. I was screaming at the top of my lungs. And they were coming towards us. It's like, thank God. And it was the Coast guard. And they were like, we can't get close. You guys have to jump in the water because it was so rough. They were crashing the rocks. And I jumped first and they got me in. I just laid out on my back and I could just see Amber just falling on us like the sky had no stars. The Amber were the stars, red stars in the sky.

That's what it looked like. Just a black sky with red stars. We're just falling down. I was falling on the ocean, but I felt like I was falling in space. I was thanking God. I was like, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't deserve this. It was just unbelievable that we made it. And Damon, he managed to make it. And I was like, thank God we made it. And I said, oh, how do you guys find us? And they said, we got a call that someone might be on the harbor. So I think that lady, she relayed the call and finally got to us. And I said, thank God we made it. And he said, oh, no, not yet. We still have to go through the storm. And I said, where are we going? And he said, we don't know. Everything's on fire. And I looked behind me and it was just... It was just... It looked like war. It was just planes up to the sky. The whole town in the darkness. So we got to Maui High School. They made a shelter there. And then when we arrived, of course, we were like cover in suit and all black.

So everyone was looking at us. And I was barefoot, but people kept staring at my feet. Everybody knew we were the ones who survived, everybody that was in the shelter were the lucky ones.

After the break, Senior Producer, Lindsay Garrison, shares an update on Idriss, a survivor of La Jainas Fire.

It's still very fresh. To be honest, it's still the day. It feels like it was yesterday. I'm at a hotel and no one knows what's next actually.

I called Idriss back in late November. He talked to me from a hotel. He said he'd been living in hotels for more than three months, waiting for FEMA to secure him an apartment. Have you been moved from hotel to hotel since we talked?

Yes. Oh, my goodness.

How many hotels?

Two, and I actually end up... Because they made a mistake and I ended up homeless for a night. Yeah, it's been hard for everyone. I'm not blaming FEMA or I don't they don't know, but it's very hard for us.

It's.

Pretty hard to live in a hotel room for that long. You can even get down every day. Not the most, not the best lifestyle. Also, if you leave your hotel room for more than two or three days and you lose that room, so you can't even go and visit family. You can't do anything. It really feels like we're in jail.

Do you do anything to give yourself some relief from just feeling stuck?

Actually, don't want to know. Absolutely nothing. I'm just in my room every day. Everyone's displaced, all my friends are on the other side and you don't have the car, and it's hard to go to the beach by yourself.

You're right. Yeah.

Yeah, it's a weird feeling. I have multiple friends that move, lost their job, lost their home. I personally lost my job as well because I'm displaced. A lot of us are still mourning and they're still in shock.

And.

They're reopened for tourists. But it's like attending a funeral and you having a party next door. You're walking and everyone's happy and everyone's drinking and music and you're there and you feel like it goes like not really in the mood. So it's a weird feeling.

Yeah.

It's going to be a long time before the high night gets back to how it was. It's never going to be how it was.

Did you ever find anything out about the pit bull that you tried to save?

No. So my cat is still missing and the pit bull is still missing. I still have a little hope. I know my friend, they just found her cat a week ago. Really? Yeah, they're still fighting a lot of paths. I don't know if my cat was that fortunate, but people are telling me not to lose hope.

I hope they both turn up.

Me too. Me too. I really hope so.

Yeah. Can you envision what your ideal future or your ideal life would look like there in the coming months?

It's hard because I was living my dream before all this happened. So it's hard for me to think of a better situation than I had before. But I think my hope would be to get my place and hopefully find my cat and then start moving out from there. It's just hard right now to imagine about anything. And that's the hardest part. The hardest thing is not to know.

Today's episode was produced by Lindsay Garrison and Sidney Harper. It was edited by Liz O'Bailen and Michael Benoît. With help from Lexie Dior, contains original music by Marion Lozano, Rowen Niemistow, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrinah Tavernisee. See you tomorrow.