A 60-year-old Maili man was seriously injured Thursday afternoon after a fire erupted in his garage, which served as an amateur motorcycle repair shop.
"Plenty gasoline tanks was blowing up," said Isayiah Reyes, 7, a neighbor.
Neighbors said they saw black smoke, followed by flames, minutes after the man returned to his home at 87-502 Kaukama Road in his red truck.
The man tried to warn his grandson, whom he believed was in the house but had actually run to another house.
"He was yelling for his grandson to get out of the house," said Jordan Freitas, 60, who lives across the street.
"You could hear a man pounding (a wall) and screaming, and he was yelling for help," said Matthew Reyes Jr., 12, who was among a group of boys who had just arrived at their family’s pig farm nearby.
Reyes said the injured man’s grandson told him that his grandfather was trying to start a motorcycle in the garage, "but it backfired and it started the fire."
Firefighters received the alarm at 3:05 p.m. and brought the blaze under control in 24 minutes.
The cause is under investigation, said fire Capt. Terry Seelig.
But Freitas said the source may have been one of the gasoline cans in the garage, where the man and his sons repaired motorcycles as a hobby.
"He said the gas can started to burn," said Freitas.
The man apparently tried to push one of his cars out of the garage before he was overwhelmed.
"He was lying on the ground yelling for help," said Freitas.
The blaze destroyed the garage and a storage room containing tools and parts, along with three or four motorcycles. Two cars in the garage were heavily damaged, said Seelig.
The fire also damaged two or three vehicles in the yard and did minor damage to the exterior of the house, Seelig said.
The man was hospitalized in serious condition.
Reyes said his father ran to help when he saw the smoke coming from the garage.
"He was going to go in, but it was too hot," Reyes said. "We didn’t want anything to happen to him."
Reyes’ father tried to put the fire out with a water hose, but it couldn’t reach the flames, the boy said.
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Star-Advertiser reporter Gary T. Kubota contributed to this report.
