Updated at 3:03 p.m., Thursday, June 28, 2007
Maui High shelter packed with visitors in 'good spirits'
By Christie Wilson
Advertiser Neighbor Island Editor
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Many were visitors unable to return to their hotels in West Maui.
Some were trying to catch flights from Kahului Airport. A US Airways flight was canceled when its flight crew couldn't get to the airport, said shelter manager Tom Worthington.
At 7 last night the shelter was empty and volunteers were preparing to close the facility. But when the highway was again shut down, the stranded began arriving, Worthington said.
"By midnight, 330 people had signed in and there was a line out the door," he said.
The Maui Hotel Association provided dozens of neon-colored inflatable rafts for some visitors to sleep on, and the Red Cross supplied cots for others. Worthington said Pizza Hut made several deliveries through the night to provide food for those at the shelter.
"Everyone was in good spirits. There no complaints," he said.
Worthington's wife, psychiatrist Dr. Leslie Gise, also volunteered and found that her medical training and privileges at Maui Memorial Medical Center came in handy when several visitors didn't have their medication. She was able to call the hospital to have medications delivered.
All the visitors who spoke with The Advertiser had high praise for the Red Cross accommodations and its volunteers.
Honeymooners' champagne reception delayed
Newlyweds Andrew and Rebecca Crawford from Birmingham, England, spent the first night of their Maui honeymoon sleeping in the high school gym after arriving on a United flight from San Francisco and being unable to reach the Hyatt Regency in Ka'anapali.
"It was a bit traumatic last night," said Rebecca Crawford, 24, because the couple were temporarily separated from their luggage, which contained gifts and other goods purchased during a shopping excursion in New York.
This morning, with their bags at their side, they enjoyed a bit of morning sun outside the gym.
"We're just hoping we'll still get our champagne reception at the hotel," said Andrew Crawford, 29. "After a cocktail we won't care. It will be a cool story to tell."
Half-day hike leads to stay at shelter
The five-member Lumley family of Tocumwal, Australia, had gone on a half-day hiking tour yesterday and their first attempt to get back to their unit at the Ka'anapali Shores was thwarted and they were dropped at Borders in Kahului around 2 p.m., where they waited for two hours before the highway reopened temporarily. On their second attempt, the Lumleys and five other passengers ended up stuck in their tour van on the highway for five hours.
Eventually they were turned back and deposited at the Kahului shelter without a toothbrush or change of clothes.
After the highway reopened this morning, Murray Lumbley, 53, wife Enid, 49, and daughters Jess, 18, Gemma, 20, and Alex, 16, all looking a little rumpled, finally boarded a bus bound for West Maui and were hoping to be able to pack their bags and turn right around to catch an 11:50 a.m. flight out of Kahului Airport to Honolulu, where they planned to stay four more nights.
Murray Lumbley didn't have complaints about the family's shelter stay and said their Maui visit "was great."
"But it was the uncertainty of not knowing when we would get there and how we would get there," he said. "And we lost a day of our vacation."
'I'm in Hawai'i. I can't complain'
Rosemarie Aquilina, a district court judge from East Lansing, Mich., seemed more cheerful than most of the shelter survivors.
She had won a Maui trip in a raffle and had arrived at 6 p.m. yesterday on a Northwest flight from Seattle, with plans to stay at the Sheraton Maui in Ka'anapali.
"I wanted to see Maui. So far I've seen a high school," she quipped.
A retired JAG — an attorney for the Judge Advocate General Corps — with the Michigan Army National Guard who saw duty during the first Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, Aquilina said a one-night stay at a Red Cross shelter was a small inconvenience.
"Stuff happens. What are you going to do? It's nothing to be upset about," Aquilina said. "I'm in Hawai'i. I can't complain. With all the disasters, this is minor."
