A fire ripped through the roof and walls of a rented single-family home in the Enchanted Lake area Tuesday.
Two men, ages 48 and 52, who live at 401 Keolu Drive, were taken to Straub Clinic & Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, Honolulu Fire Department spokesman David Jenkins said.
Emergency Medical Services said they were taken by ambulance at 11:55 a.m. in stable condition. Neighbors said one of the men suffered burns to his right arm, and the other was a cancer patient who had difficulty breathing and briefly became unconscious.
The blaze caused an estimated $500,000 in damage to the structure, $50,000 to its contents and $50,000 to two vehicles in the garage, Jenkins said. The origin and cause remained under investigation Tuesday. Neighboring homes sustained minor damage.
The fire broke out at 11:53 a.m. The first company arrived four minutes later, and the blaze was under control at 12:23 p.m.
Two other men, ages 19 and 20, who helped douse the blaze with garden hoses, were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation.
Jordyn Reindollar, 20, was asleep in his house when he awoke to a neighbor pounding on his door, and said he saw 15-foot flames next door.
"I came outside with my garden hose and started shooting down the walls" before firefighters arrived, he said. His friend came to help.
Reindollar said he helped one of the men in the house. "He wasn’t doing so good trying to treat the fire. He ended up passing out once, and we ended up catching him before he fell."
He and others, including firefighters and construction workers, tried to catch six dogs that were running around on the property.
"I ended up saving one of the dogs, and it ended up running back inside," he said, adding that its paws were bloody.
Next-door neighbor Stacey Tuzinski, 42, was home from work with her two sick daughters when she heard yelling and popping sounds.
"I looked out my window and said, ‘Oh my gosh, the house!’"
Tuzinski said she saw large flames coming from a shed only three feet from her house, and the wind was picking up.
She told her kids to get out of the house, then called 911.
The two men were trying to contain the fire themselves, then tried to save their dogs, she said.
Meanwhile, Kaiona Killebrew, 67, who lives across the street, tried to warn neighbors: "I was pounding on all the doors."
She said construction workers from down the street arrived, trying to catch the dogs and put them inside a truck parked on the street, but the smoke overwhelmed them, and she volunteered to have the dogs brought to her yard.
