there's a reason Jonathan herzog's video has been viewed over a million times it tells the story of Front Street in those crucial hours of 3 P.M 4 P.M and 5 P.M Jonathan herzog's day didn't just end with roadblocks but it began with them during his am commute from Kihei and as I got into Lahaina they were redirecting us all around through these back streets and branches were coming down on his way to Kaanapali Herzog started filming as he entered Town sensing unusual conditions the winds were the worst winds I've ever been in in my life
when he was later heading home through Lahaina town just before 3 pm he hit this roadblock on the southbound Highway at kapuna Kea before the Cannery Mall Herzog backtracked to where Front Street meets the highway traffic moved well enough at that time to rejoin the highway near Lahaina Luna here at 302 PM but then Herzog says traffic snarled with downed trees and Crews working to the south then I ended up turning around and trying to go north again thinking well at least I'll get out of Lahaina but to the north the gridlock was worse he
says so he detoured over on Baker and then South again on Waianae at 3 19 his camera shows a police vehicle blocking access to the highway at papalawa but nothing had eased up so without GPS he heads North to look for an open route his first view of the fire at 3 24 pm on the hillside and just before 4 pm he ends up in this line of cars on Front Street in gridlock my goal is to get into the Kingdom Hall parking lot just sat there I think it was a good 25 minutes something
like that so now the smoke is virtually blocking out the light I am gonna make my way down to the water at 426 Herzog abandoned his car at Kingdom Hall and walked to Malo Wharf it was obvious the fire was out of control so that's when I decided to leave the vehicle completely passing vehicle after vehicle he noticed of those on the bridge all of those cars were still sitting there just same same exact spots kitv4 reported on the other side of the Cannery mall that Herzog passed by in the 4 pm hour the highway
was completely shut down for two and a half hours at keave Street until at least 5 24 PM traffic routed towards Front Street at 5 30 Herzog comes to the end of Front Street and to his surprise it looks like two police vehicles Parts kind of nose to that exit for Front Street kind of out of B like this the traffic had basically bottlenecked right there so there were cars in both lanes trying to go north by the this point but everyone was stopped on Front Street right there as the maintenance worker walked past the
gridlock heading north on foot at 5 33 PM motorists had been fleeing into the water as seen in Noah tompkinson's video one mile to the south of the Front Street roadblock near Baker two blocks south of where Herzog had abandoned his car I asked the chief of police directly at the last press conference were command and control for fire and police in contact that afternoon in the Emergency Operations Center he declined to answer that but says that police were directing the public away from dangerous power lines Hawaiian Electric says those power lines were de-energized as
of the morning reporting from Lahaina Jeremy Lee kitv 4 Island news back to you
