A grainy photograph of Maribel Maurillo Barton’s two sisters and six of their children — the youngest age 3 — huddled in a hotel room in the Philippines, mugging for the camera hours before Typhoon Hai­yan struck, is the last taken of them alive.

Barton’s 15-year-old nephew Jason Lanorias managed to escape, "but the other seven perished in the storm," said her husband, Paul.

"It’s really hard looking at the pictures and their Facebook pictures," said Maribel Barton, 37, a Kapolei resident.

"It’s kind of chilling," added Paul Barton.

The eight fled their home in Tacloban in Leyte province, fearful the leaking sheet-metal roof might cave in, and ended up at a hotel, which they thought would be safer.

Paul Barton said, "They posted Facebook pictures to let us know they were OK, and they were clowning it up."

But their room at the seaside hotel was on the ground floor.

During the storm, Barton’s sister Michelle kept trying to maintain a Skype connection, but it kept cutting out.

Their last phone call was at about 5 a.m. Friday in the Philippines.

"I still keep hearing my sister when I talked to her," Barton said. "She said, ‘Can you hear the wind?’ I could hear the wind. It was really loud. It was really loud."

The call abruptly ended.

The Bartons can only guess what happened.

"We were thinking about the roof and the wind, but we didn’t really think about the water," Maribel Barton said. "They moved to a hotel made of concrete, but they didn’t think about the water. They were just right close to the sea."

She believes the water came flooding into their first-floor room.

"They probably drowned together," Paul Barton said.

Maribel Barton spoke to a cousin in Manila who was in touch with a cousin in Tacloban who found Lanorias. He told her everyone else had died and that their bodies were at the convention center in Tacloban.

Meanwhile, Maribel Barton’s brother, believed to be alive, is missing.

Barton’s brother, Marvin, lived with the eight in the photo in the family home in Tacloban. It’s unclear why he didn’t go to the hotel.

Barton has remained close to her family in the Philippines, talking on the phone and Skyping for hours every night with her youngest sister, Michelle Maurillo, 30, and her children, Matthew, 7, Mary Grace, 6, and Meco, 3.

Since Barton helped raise her eldest sister Grace’s children while she worked in Hong Kong, she was especially close to nieces Gellie, 20, and Donna Mae, 19, who was eight months pregnant.

Although there are many Filipinos living in Hawaii, few come from Leyte province, the Bartons said, and they haven‘t met any from Tacloban City.

The Bartons, who met in Honolulu, wed in 2000 in Tacloban City.

Her parents had lived together with their children and grandchildren in the same Tacloban house until a couple of years ago, when they moved to Hawaii to live with the Bartons.

"My mom, I’m worried about her," she said. "Those kids, they lived in one house. They lived with them. They’re her kids."

The family is trying to locate her brother and Lanorias and fly them to Cebu along with Grace’s surviving daughter and other son.

Maribel Barton also has a sister living on Maui, who will fly to Hono­lulu with her son Thursday, and they plan to travel to the Philippines to help.

Barton said she doesn’t know whether it’s a good idea.

"It’s really dangerous," she said. "I see on the news. We’re really worried about the people there and my relatives who are still alive.

"We just have to pray," she said. "It’s all we can do."