State of emergency in Hawaii.
New video
shows wildfires
moving quickly across western Maui.
Hurricane charged winds are making it
nearly impossible to battle
at least five separate fires, including
one that did move
through a Maui neighborhood.
911 service
and cell service
has gone down in parts of that island.
Officials describe
a dire situation
as hospitals are overwhelmed
with patients
suffering burns and smoke injuries.
Now, Kate
spoke to a man who shot video
of a fire encroaching on his West
Maui town.
He described it
as a wall of fire
engulfing buildings
on both sides of the street.
He said he does not expect his homes
to survive.
One of my houses
definitely caught fire.
The other houses are each a block away
and I did not see them burn.
But I
recognize there is a very good chance
that they are not there anymore.
Both of them
were completely covered in smoke.
When I went after I started to evacuate,
I went back to just check to see
if the house was on fire or not.
It wasn't,
but I was standing at the street
looking at my house
and I couldn't see my whole house
because of the smoke.
But the smoke was coming from
another
property that was a few buildings away.
And then I went down to Front Street
right after that
and wanted to check on my gallery.
I've had a gallery
in the center of front street for 23 years.
And as I began walking that way,
the there's a historic building
on Front Street in Dickenson,
the old Baldwin house.
The roof was on fire,
and I started taking a video of it
because I was amazed that there were
there were no fire trucks.
There
And then as I turned and looked down
Front Street,
Front Street exploded in flames
just remarkable pictures there.
And earlier,
we also spoke with a Hawaiian
official, told us
that these fires are not at all
under control.
CNN's Derek Van Damme, you can see him.
He is with us now.
Derek, not at all under control.
You know what hope is there
to turn the corner against these fires?
Well, we've got a tough 12 hours ahead.
My producers
and I just checked
on the current conditions on Maui.
Winds are gusting to 66 miles per hour
within the past hour.
So clearly still funneling and fueling
some of these flames.
So what you're looking at
and the video
you saw
directly before me is from Lahaina
on the western side of Maui.
You got to understand
that this is the economic hub of Maui.
This is where residents go.
This is where tourists or residents live.
This is where tourists go to vacation.
You know, with 20% of the island
without power,
this is a significant,
significant event for the island of Maui.
And it's not just Maui. It's also Hawaii.
We've learned just in the past
couple of hours
emergency declarations being issued
by the lieutenant governor of Hawaii
for the big island.
From that burn scar,
you start to see where this hotspot
you see on this satellite imagery.
Also interesting to note,
you can see the direction of the smoke
just pushing
the wildfire smoke away from Maui
and into the open
ocean of the Pacific Ocean.
This is showing you
just how strong the winds actually are.
So what's taking place here?
Why are we getting these strong winds
over the Hawaiian Islands?
That's all thanks to
this kind of pressure squeezed
between the high pressure to the north
and a passing hurricane to the south.
That's Hurricane Dora.
And it's putting the squeeze
on the Hawaiian Islands.
And what that's doing is creating
wind gusts in excess of 80 miles
per hour.
That's equivalent to a Category
one Atlantic hurricane.
Wind advisories
and red flag warnings are in place
for the entire Hawaiian island chain.
And similar
to what we experienced
in Southern California with Santa
Ana winds,
we are having this wind come up
and over mountaintops.
Very simple
thermodynamic processes at play here.
As that
wind rushes over the mountains
and through the canyons,
it dries out,
it heats up,
and it also increases the wind.
So until this hurricane
and this high pressure
move away from the Hawaiian Islands,
we will see these winds, these
very dry,
hot winds
that create these tinderbox
conditions continue.