Fire hits downtown high-rise unit
Chris Kanemura • The Honolulu Advertiser
Fire poured from a fifth-floor unit of the Maunakea Tower high-rise in Chinatown last night.
By John Windrow
Advertiser Staff Writer
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
Smoke and fire last night forced the evacuation of three floors of an apartment building on the edge of Chinatown.
A security guard helped keep order in a crowd of evacuees, while firefighters fought the blaze.
The fire left barefoot, pajama-clad residents waiting on the street into the night to get back to their homes.
The fire was reported shortly before 10:30 p.m. in Apartment 509 of the Maunakea Tower at 1245 Maunakea, fire Capt. Emmit Kane said.
He said the unit was occupied by a mother and her daughter. The woman discovered the fire when she returned to the unit from the building's laundry. Firefighters did not know what sparked the blaze, which firefighters said was extinguished at 12:09 a.m.
Kane said the fire was confined to the one unit. He said there was smoke and water damage to the building, but it was too soon last night to determine its extent.
No major injuries were reported, but the fire caused some anxious moments for residents of the 33-floor building, many of whom waited on the street last night for word of when they might get back into their units.
Merry Mixayphone was in her eighth-floor unit with her mother, two small boys and two relatives when she heard the fire alarm and looked out a window.
"A man in street yelled up at me, 'There's a fire, there's a fire,'" she said. "We went out in to the hallway and it was really smoky. We were kinda panicky. We knew we had to get out of there. We were trying to keep the children calm."
Mixayphone and her family walked down the stairway to escape.
As they waited with the crowds on the street last night, Capt. Kane used the opportunity to teach Mixayphone's two children the importance of an evacuation plan.
"Anytime there's a fire and no one is hurt it's a lucky thing," Kane said.
