Posted on: Friday, April 8, 2005
Cause of Palama blaze unknown
Advertiser Staff
Five men were left homeless but no one was injured after a noon-hour fire gutted a house yesterday at the corner of Lopez and Austin lanes in Palama, about two blocks mauka of Tamashiro Market on King Street.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser "I went out to look and the smoke was already pouring out of all of the windows," Cluney said. "Everybody was running around trying to crack the windows open and make sure nobody was left inside. At first the smoke was going straight up, but after the wind caught the flames, everybody started taking off."
Cluney said his two cousins lived in the house that burned as well as two or three other tenants who rented rooms there. He said one of his cousins told him the fire appeared to have broken out in a bedroom that was locked but unoccupied.
Capt. Emmit Kane, a spokesman for the Honolulu Fire Department, said the two-alarm blaze was reported at 11:59 a.m. He said eight fire companies made up of about 35 firefighters responded, and the fire was reported under control at 12:13 p.m.
When the two men saw smoke coming out of a bedroom window of their own home, they tried to get back in but were turned away by the amount of smoke and heat the fire had already generated, Kane said.
"In a sense, that was a good thing because we never want people to go back into a burning building. These people did the right thing — they went to a neighboring house and called for help," Kane said.
He said quick action by firefighters kept the blaze from spreading through a tightly congested neighborhood filled mostly with old, single-wall wooden homes.
The five men who were displaced by the fire range in age from the early 20s to older than 80, Kane said.
"Some of them are being taken in by family members and some are being assisted by the Red Cross," Kane said.
The fire's cause and a damage estimate were not immediately available.
Christopher Cluney, who lives next door to the older wooden house that burned, said his sister-in-law burst into the living room where he was watching TV and told him the other house was on fire.
Bernardo Acorda returned from grocery shopping yesterday to find his house on the corner of Lopez and Austin lanes in Palama gutted by a fire. Firefighters were credited with keeping the fire from spreading through the crowded neighborhood.
"Two of the residents of the house that burned were home at the time, smelled smoke and went outside to investigate," Kane said. "They actually thought the smoke was coming from another house."
