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August 25, 2024

Maui County firefighter Kawika Casco (from left) was interviewed by Mark Rolfing and Todd Lewis of The Golf Channel on Wednesday near the 11th tee of the Kapalua Plantation Course. The first round of The Sentry starts the PGA Tour season today on the Plantation Course with a field of 59. Casco, a 10-year veteran of the Maui Fire Department, detailed his heroic actions on Aug. 8 during the wildfire that killed 100 and destroyed more than 2,000 structures in Lahaina during his six-minute live interview. The Maui News / ROBERT COLLIAS photos

KAPALUA — Kawika Casco will never forget his shift on Aug. 8 as a fire apparatus operator/Firefighter III/driver for Engine 1 out of the Wailuku Fire Station.

The soft-spoken 10-year veteran of the Maui County Fire Department wants to make sure that the rest of the world doesn’t forget that fateful day either, the day that saw a deadly wildfire kill 100 people and wipe out more than 2,000 structures in Lahaina, leaving thousands of West Maui residents displaced by the damage.

“I think the biggest thing is to just get the word out of how important it is for this rebuild process to happen quickly so the people of Lahaina can stay,” Casco said at the 11th tee area of the Kapalua Plantation Course on Wednesday, a few minutes before going on The Golf Channel to do a live six-minute interview from The Sentry golf tournament that is opening the PGA Tour season today. “There’s big issues, but my biggest is to spread awareness, to let people know about the thousands of people who need homes.

“Local community is what makes Lahaina Lahaina. They bring the aloha spirt, they’re what brings that feeling of home, comfort, relaxation.”

Casco served more than 24 straight hours during a shift that began in the morning of Aug. 8 and saw his fire truck destroyed by the inescapable fire storm as he was battling the blaze with his crew mates on Lahainaluna Road near the Paoa Street intersection in the shadow of the Old Pioneer Mill silo that still stands.

Kawika Casco appeared on The Golf Channel to stress the need for help for the wildfire relief efforts at The Sentry golf tournament Wednesday. The PGA Tour season opener starts today.

Casco helped save numerous lives that day, including one of a captain who collapsed while working with him, as he and fellow MFD firefighters narrowly escaped with their own lives.

“I can’t remember what time we were dispatched, but when we turned the pali we saw the plume of smoke which normally goes straight up, but this was laying parallel to the ground,” he said. “So we were assigned to help another engine company at the bottom of Lahainaluna (Road) to try and stop it from progressing through the town. When we got on scene that engine company was fighting a structure fire at the bottom of Lahainaluna. We bypassed them to hopefully, you know, our thought process was to stop it from progressing further.

“We didn’t get too far into the neighborhood when we realized that it was too involved. Like, no matter what we did at that point we wouldn’t have done anything.”

Then things got really dangerous, but Casco and company, like so many of their peers, kept fighting the unstoppable blaze.

“We got notice to evacuate, so we tried evacuating, you know, multiple ways, realized that we were stuck, so we ended up just sheltering in place,” he said. “Setting up hose lines, trying to conserve air and all that. I don’t know how long it was, but we just kind of hunkered down, waited for it to blow over. It got too hot in our cab, things like the windshield was failing … so we ended up going to the exterior of the engine downwind which was a little better than inside the cab.

“We were there and then all of a sudden a police SUV drove up and the door opened and it was another firefighter from the other engine company we were stuck with, Tanner Moser. He said: ‘Get in.’ So we start making our way there, jumping in the police SUV and then a firefighter, a captain from the other crew, he went unconscious when we were going there.”

After carrying the fallen captain to the SUV and administering CPR to him — he survived — they made their way to the Lahaina Aquatic Center area.

“There was eight of us in there, in a small SUV, so we made to the aquatic center and we started working — at one point we did CPR, but then we realized he had a pulse, and the ambulance came,” Casco said. “Then we just waited for our next assignment — that was the start of our journey that night. And the rest of the night was spent grabbing people, directing people out. There was a lot of that, protecting structures that weren’t impacted yet, like structural triage.

“It’s just, it feels like a bad dream, but while you’re in it you’re not thinking, you’re just reacting, doing what you got to do to save as many people as you can. Everyone I was helping that night, it was nonstop, I was walking as far on Front Street in Lahaina as I could, grabbing people, walking them out, carrying them out. … I think we were relieved around 9 a.m., but I ended up staying to work with the next crew. I ended up staying and working until the following night.”

His message is simple: Keep Lahaina Lahaina. But that will take some forward thinking Casco said, as some of those around him Wednesday were hailing him as a “super hero.”

“You know, the people can’t leave. … There needs to be some kind of housing project or something to keep the people here because we know the federal money is not going to last forever,” Casco said. “People can’t be getting kicked out of hotels last minute. Yeah, we’ve got to keep the people here. Somehow, I don’t know what the solution is for that, but the people of Lahaina, the ones who have been here for generations, they make Lahaina Lahaina. They can’t leave, man. I think that’s the biggest issue right now moving forward.”

Todd Lewis, a veteran broadcaster on The Golf Channel, was nearly moved to tears by his interview with Casco that was shown live with the ‘Au’au Channel in the background.

“I’m used to talking to golfers who shoot 65, so I’m comfortable doing that, I’ve been doing that at Golf Channel for over 16 years,” Lewis said. “But you have a different perspective when you’re interviewing and trying to present to our viewers what a real courageous winner is like. It’s a different presence when you’re standing next to someone like Kawika because of what he has done, what he did on that fateful August day, continues to do for the community.

“You just want to make sure that that message gets across that everyone on Maui is lucky to have him. … That interview to me is more important than when I sat down and interviewed Tiger (Woods) when he won the Masters.”

Kapalua resident Mark Rolfing, a 39-year veteran of the Golf Channel, is the man who reached out to Casco to do the rare interview and conducted it with Lewis.

“Well, I’m speechless right now, even after having just gone through that,” Rolfing said. “I’ve done a lot of interviews throughout my career, but to see a real-life super hero standing next to me and listen to him tell the story of what happened, I just can’t imagine. And there were so many people like him, I know.

“I think that I’ve come away from this experience the last half hour with him thinking that if he’s got hope and if he knows how important it is for us to have had this golf tournament and to be able to pull off something like this in a short five months, it just ought to really give us hope and confidence that we can pull off this recovery, which is extremely more difficult than pulling off a golf tournament. There is hope and he’s got it.”

Casco, 42, was a two-time state wrestling champion and star football player for Lahainaluna High School before a successful career at the University of Utah. He lives in Waiehu with wife Randi (formerly Kikuchi) and sons Wyatt, 10, Carter, 5, and Cooper, 2.

Several family members, including brother Kainoa Casco, lost their homes in the wildfire. Parents Randy and Stacy Casco saw their home survive the fire as it sits above the Lahaina Bypass.

Casco said he still has nightmares about those days during and after the wildfire. He said driving past the devastation to get to places like Kapalua brings the full spectrum of emotions.

“It’s a little different every time,” he said. “Sometimes you get flashbacks of that night or some of the events you went through. Other times you think of what it used to be. Different memories pop up as you’re driving through. It’s different every time, but every time you come back it’s just, like, ‘Man, you got to rebuild this better,’ but we’ve got to rebuild it for the local community, something that benefits them.

“We’re always going to have tourism, but I feel it should be structured around the local community somehow, I don’t know what that looks like. I’m glad there are a lot of people that are in the positions to kind of have influence on that, I’m glad there’s local people that are there to do that. … I hope that the local community can have a large say in how that’s planned out and I’m very hopeful for that.”

Kawika Casco appeared on The Golf Channel to stress the need for help for the wildfire relief efforts at The Sentry golf tournament Wednesday. The PGA Tour season opener starts today.

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