Ben and Chris Nary lost all of their possessions in a house fire that raged through four Ewa Beach townhouses Saturday night.
House keys, drivers licenses, credit cards — all gone.
Handcrafted koa wood tables and artwork made by family members — gone.
A white 2005 Volkswagen Beetle in the garage — gone.
"It’s not a very good feeling," Chris Nary said, holding back tears as her neighbor Lynne Westlake comforted her.
Westlake said the fire spread so fast that all the family had time to do was grab their animals and run.
"Her husband was running around, knocking on doors and yelling, ‘Get out! Get out!’ because most of them didn’t know anything was even happening," Westlake said. "They said they wouldn’t have gotten out if he hadn’t have come."
Chris Nary’s dog, her "rescue baby," Daphne, made it out with the couple, along with one of their three indoor/outdoor cats, but two cats have yet to be accounted for, she said.
Honolulu Fire Department spokesman Capt. Terry Seelig said an investigation into the cause of the fire is ongoing and that investigators will return today to continue searching the rubble for clues.
The fire on Laaulu Street in the Arbors townhouse complex was reported at 8:30 p.m. and brought under control at 10:05 p.m., Seelig said.
Ten people were displaced by the blaze, but no injuries were reported. The Red Cross responded to help those who needed food, clothing or a place to stay.
Two of the four affected units were heavily damaged, one was moderately damaged and the other less damaged, Seelig said.
Ben Nary said the fire started in his garage.
"We thought my son had come home because usually the garage door, when it closes, (you hear) like a thump," he said, sitting in the back of a truck watching the fire investigators. "So we heard a sound like that, and my wife asked me, ‘Oh, did John come home?’
"From my chair in the living room, I can look and see the garage, and I saw a light so I thought, ‘Oh, yeah, he probably did come home,’" he continued. "And then the smoke alarm went off. I was charging some batteries, and I went, ‘Oh, my gosh! Don’t tell me there was a short or something.’ So I ran into the garage, and the flames had engulfed the corner already, so I … grabbed our extinguisher. But I could feel heat above me and on the side of me, and I said, ‘Oh, this fire’s gone already, it’s going.’ So I told my wife to call 911, and then we made sure the animals were out."
Nary said he tried to open the garage door to spray the fire with a garden hose, but "things were falling from the ceiling already."
"I just started yelling, and I said, ‘Everybody, get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!" he said. "And I was spraying down and yelling at the same time to make sure that people heard me. … I stayed until the glass started exploding and I said, ‘Oh, I better get out of here, too.’"
The fire showed no mercy.
"It was intense," Nary said. "It spread, like, within five minutes. The whole thing was engulfed."
Parts of the multi-unit building looked like a dilapidated dollhouse Sunday morning, with doors and windows gone, leaving first- and second-story rooms exposed for all to see. But all that was revealed were the charred remnants of rooms and melted remains of furniture.
A nearby resident who can see the building from her unit said Sunday that her boyfriend ran outside when he heard an explosion.
"I came outside, and I couldn’t even see the building," Alexis Caramonte said, examining the damage done to the side of the units. "It was just all engulfed in flames; it was just so fast."
Caramonte said her ex-boyfriend recently rewired the electricity in her entire unit, which she’s lived in for the past two years, because she had two faulty outlets.
"All our electrical was faulty because it was 20, over 20 years old," she said. "I knew it was faulty because it sparked, and I knew not to plug anything in (it), so I had him change all my outlets and he said, yeah, if I plugged anything in that outlet, I would have started a fire."
Seelig said fire officials estimated the blaze caused $680,000 in damage.
