Maui couple spent hours in ocean to escape wildfire, many dead people and noted missing babies
Elizabeth Vargas Reports
As fire erupted in Maui, Mike Cicchino and his wife jumped into the crashing waves and spent more than three hours in the ocean.
Elizabeth Vargas: How did you get to the ocean, I know the fire came so fast you barely had time to think?
Mike Cicchino: We pretty much just tried driving the opposite way of the fire, but immediately traffic was everywhere, nobody knew where to go.
Elizabeth Vargas: Nobody was directing you, nobody was telling you anything, right?
Mike Cicchino: No, when it happened I knew if I called 911 the phone might drop out, or even if I could get hold of 911. So, my first thought was to call my Mom because she is in Wailuku and she could contact 911 and see where we are supposed to go. I immediately got a call back from my Mom a minute later that she talked to 911 and all they could tell her was to follow the traffic, follow everybody else. That made us get into a giant traffic jam where nobody could get out and basically fire was everywhere. You had people running to the left and the right and into the ocean. Nobody knew where to go there was not enough warning.
Elizabeth Vargas: We are looking at this video now of the fire, we just saw a moment ago a shot of you standing in the water with all these other people standing in the water I guess up to your waist, even up to your rib cage it was the only safe place you could find?
Mike Cicchino: At times, even where you are seeing those videos where people are standing, became on fire, it was like a continuous bomb going off. Times where you couldn't be in the water without being burned.
Elizabeth Vargas: How long where you in the water?
Mike Cicchino: On and off for three hours. So, every time the water started getting fire we would swim into a spot that had less smoke and a little bit of oxygen. It was going back and forth and this is over a 12 hour period.
Elizabeth Vargas: How far out did you have to go to get safely from all this smoke?
Mike Cicchino: It was so dark, so there were times it was so dark I didn't know how far we were out. We were trying to touch the bottom to basically keep our heads above water, my wife is not the best swimmer. We got stuck in a rip current that was pulling us out and there were times we couldn't touch the ground and we didn't even know where the ground is. When smoke would clear for a second we would see some red, okay, that is where the land is. Even in the smoke you had embers and fires hitting you and every time the fire would hit my back or my face I would dunk under water and then come back up to get a breath, the fire would hit me and I would go back under and this went on the whole night.
Elizabeth Vargas: Mike I can't even imagine what was going through your mind did you start to wonder if your guys were going to make it?
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