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“If shrubs and bushes, especially flammable ones, are right up next to the house and embers catch them on fire, the heat can burst the window and it goes right into the home from there,” Kocher told the LA Times. When the new metal roof was installed, he added, it included an air pocket to allow heat to dissipate. At the ground level, they removed all vegetation along the house's dripline and added a stone buffer — a step taken to thwart not fires, but termites.
Red roofed house in Maui miraculously remains unscathed after Hawaii wildfires
At least 114 people have died in the Maui wildfires that started last Tuesday. After the renovation, the house was nominated to join the National Registry of Historical places. Identified as the Pioneer Mill Company/Lahaina Ice Company Bookkeeper's House, the dwelling was used by bookkeepers of a company that did everything from delivering ice and soda water to selling electric power to the town of Lahaina. That’s followed by the “near home environment” — the area immediately surrounding the structure, she said. Experts suggest that homeowners clear flammable vegetation in a 5-foot radius and replace it with a hardscape feature such as paving stones or gravel — similar to what the Millikins did, she said. Pattie Tamura, whose family owns the house believes it survived due to its concrete walls.
See the 100-year-old "miracle house" that survived the Lahaina wildfire
With the help of local carpenters and construction workers, the homeowners trimmed trees on the property and installed a commercial-grade steel roof. Unlike shingles or asphalt roofing, the steel roof may have provided better protection from rogue embers. Trip told Civil Beat they also removed existing landscaping around the home and filled the dug-out areas with river stones. Working closely with the county and the local historic commission, they replaced the asphalt roof with heavy-gauge metal — the home would have originally had a roof of either wooden shake or thinner-grade corrugated tin, she said.
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In an interaction with the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, Tamura shared that the house was built by her grandfather using cement to help it withstand bugs and dry rot. For one, Atwater Millikin said they laid stones in place of foliage surrounding the house. "It's a 100% wood house, so it's not like we fireproofed it or anything," Atwater Millikin told the outlet. In the morning, a friend called and sent them a picture from a helicopter flyover of Lahaina.
100-Year-Old Red-Roofed House Left Unscathed by Maui Wildfires - Inside Edition
100-Year-Old Red-Roofed House Left Unscathed by Maui Wildfires.
Posted: Tue, 22 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
"It looks like it was photoshopped in," Trip Millikin, who owns the house, told local outlet Honolulu Civil Beat. Records show he and his wife Dora Millikin bought the house in May 2021 after what he told the Civil Beat was a long time of bicycling by. Maui county records show the house at its current location at 271 Front Street is 81 years old, and sits on more than 11,000 square feet of property at 271 Front Street in the city that was once the long-standing capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom. The current homeowner told Civil Beat that he and his wife bought the property in 2021 and worked with the county on a historic preservation plan before starting a renovation project. The wildfires, fanned by strong winds, burned multiple buildings, forced evacuations and caused power outages in several communities.
Hawaii wildfires: The red Lahaina house that survived Maui fires
Millikin and his wife, Dora Millikin, fell in love with the Front Street house several years ago, although it was vacant and had fallen into a state of disrepair. Despite their guilt, the Millikin couple intends to help others in the area who weren’t lucky enough to keep their homes. Though they will not return to Lahaina until they are certain they won’t take any much-needed resources from survivors, Trip and Dora said they want to use their property as “a base” for those who need it.
The National Weather Service said Hurricane Dora was partly to blame for the strong winds that knocked out power as night came. Stunning aerial images of the unscathed property went viral last week — while also sparking bonkers conspiracies that the local devastation was a targeted laser attack from space. Friends have offered an apartment in a nearby town and Dora and Trip plan to come and volunteer to work in the recovery effort. When they do, they'll also cope with the shock of seeing Lahaina without the people and places that, until Aug. 8, made up the town's fabric. "What's behind it are the original — I think they're redwood — planks from about 1920. They didn't burn," Millikin said.
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Millikin is hoping to channel his luck — and his feelings of guilt — into community action. He’s been told by neighbors that it’s best to stay put outside of Lahaina while he can so as not to take up much-needed resources for other survivors. In the instance of the Front Street house, there was also a considerable amount of luck involved, he said. Because even the most well-prepared house can catch fire when the homes next to it are burning. Millikin said the decision to install river stones for about a meter around the house was not actually aimed at fire prevention.
"Hawaiians worked on this house"
He wanted to prevent runoff from landscaping from creating water and termite damage. During renovations, Millikin installed a commercial-grade steel roof, something that definitely would have provided better protection from flying embers than shingles. At first, Millikin thought this might have made the biggest difference in why his home was spared. Millikin has spent much of the last week — in between anxious calls to check up on friends and neighbors — puzzling over why his house was somehow spared. The red-roofed home's owners were on a trip to Massachusetts when they heard news of the fire.
She recalled when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speculated that the 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 people when it destroyed Paradise, might have been started by a laser beam in space. Millikin and his wife bought the property in 2021, working with the county on a historic preservation plan before embarking on a nearly two-year renovation project. They did much of the work themselves, along with a local carpenter and the help of neighbors. Pictures have gone viral of a single red-roofed home that appears virtually unscathed as the neighbourhood around it has been reduced to piles of ash and rubble from the Maui fires. In a breathtaking photo, the lone, 100-year-old wooden house on Front Street is seen unscathed alongside numerous other properties that have been turned to ash and rubble. Millikin told the outlet that when they were doing renovations, they also put it in a commercial-grade steel roof and dug out old landscaping to replace it with river stones about a meter around the house.
The wildfires in Maui have claimed more than 100 lives and thousands of buildings and homes have been destroyed in the blaze. However, a church in Lahaina had survived the flames while other structures around it got decimated. In another discovery, authorities and residents are shocked to see a red roofed house which remains unscathed while homes and property around it, have been burnt to the ground. "When this was all happening, there were pieces of wood — 6, 12 inches long — that were on fire and just almost floating through the air with the wind and everything," Atwater Millikin told The Times. "They would hit people's roofs, and if it was an asphalt roof, it would catch on fire. And otherwise, they would fall off the roof and then ignite the foliage around the house."
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