captain vince carter runs a helicopter tour company, air maui. he realised just how devastating the fires were. we knew there were fires there previously the night before. we'd been having a lot of wildfires on the island previously, so there was already five or six fires burning through the night. we knew that the power was out on the other side over there, so there was no word coming back through the night of the destruction, of what had really happened there. i was working in the morning, we had a helicopterfired up and we went to see what was going on over there. as we turned the corner around the mountain from the airport, you could see the smoke rising from the city, from the former city. and as we got a little closer, there was a small bit of hope because there was some south—east condos that were still intact, but then quickly, as you looked up, you could see about half of that complex was gone and everything past that, as you were able to see through the smoke, was gone. that was the point where i believe we were the first civilians to s