Fire

The Big Island of Hawaii is much more fiery than Oahu. This past April, Ari’s parents flew us there for a joint vacation with them. The last time I had been on the Big Island was to celebrate P15’s twelfth birthday. At that time, the Kilauea caldera was releasing volcanic fumes, with a crater full of lava that made the sky glow at night and sent chills down my spine – that lava lake hadn’t been there 13 years earlier when I visited with my graduating Caltech Geological and Planetary Sciences class.

 (Kilauea caldera, July 2016)

In the almost 3 years that had passed since P turned 12, a massive volcanic eruption further caved in the caldera in addition to filling in some of the most beautiful reef snorkeling I have seen in my life with brand-new rock. I trembled with awe as we watched the “What Changed” video at the visitor’s center, and my jaw hung open as I stared at the difference in the caldera.

(Kilauea caldera, April 2019)

The bulk of our vacation was a wealth of beautiful, interesting experiences. Ari’s parents watched the children while the 2 of us spent 6 days on our own, boating, hiking, and relaxing, and we had some delightful adventures all together as well. On the afternoon before the day we were to leave, we received a reminder that this was a geologically active island in the form of a 5.3 magnitude earthquake that rocked the house for several seconds. It did no obvious damage, and I had experienced a similar earthquake when I was a student at Caltech, so I didn’t think much more about it. We spent the evening enjoying the luxuries of our rental house.

The rental house was certainly luxurious! It was far larger than our own house, with a swimming pool, a garage with ping pong table, and a stunning view of the ocean. We saw occasional whale spouts and phenomenal sunsets that included my first unequivocal view of the fabled “green flash.” We sat outside on the porch for dinner, enjoying creature comforts like battery operated salt and pepper grinders that illuminated our food as they ground spice onto it. After dinner that last night we gathered on the many couches to watch a movie on the colossal flat screen, and then went to bed with plans to do our packing in the morning.

Morning came much sooner than expected in the form of a piercing series of shrieks from the smoke detector around 3 a.m. Instantly, I jerked awake – ever since experiencing a hotel fire 3 days before my 14^th birthday, I have taken those things seriously. A single whiff confirmed that this was no nuisance alarm, and I started shouting “FIRE!” repeatedly as I collected my glasses and opened the flashlight function on my phone. I started trying to hunt down the source of the smoke while continuing to yell, and found a black column gushing from the vent in the bathroom floor across the hall from our room. P15 (still 14 then) entered the hall and I told her to get out of the house, then I woke and gathered the boys and escorted them into the driveway. By this time the other adults in the house were awake and outside as well, so we had a complete head count (which I repeated a few times, to be certain!) We agreed that since I was already using my phone, I would call 911.

While we were waiting for the fire department to arrive, we moved the children down to the end of the driveway to be farther from the noxious fumes coming from the house. Ari offered to go back into the house to rescue my violin, but I didn’t want him to risk his lungs and ordered him not to. (I love my violin, which has been in the family since shortly after World War II, but I love Ari more – my experience of smoke inhalation tells me it isn’t worth the risk!) The tropical night air was comfortably cool, and I kept the children calm with speculations of what the firemen might do and what their trucks might look like. Once they did arrive, the children watched with interest as men and women in protective gear went up and down the driveway and attached the hose to the fire hydrant on the curb, used an enormous wrench to open the hydrant, and disappeared to the house to direct the water that now filled the previously flat hose. Once they were done, I took the children and sat in the minivan so they could try to get a bit more sleep. By this time a small amount of light was starting to turn the sky from black to dark blue.

As soon as it was light enough to see, the adults left the children with strict orders to stay outside while we brought all our possessions, now reeking of smoke, into the driveway to pack them. The firemen had confirmed that the house was still structurally sound but had to officially recommend that we stay outside due to the lingering chemicals from the fire. The house was a dingy grey hue, and picking up the shampoo from the bathtub revealed a white shadow beneath it that allowed me to grasp just how coated everything was with smoke residue. The floor of our bedroom was barely cool enough to walk on with bare feet, and my violin case was warmer than I liked when I lifted it (it wound up being more out of tune than it’s been since we moved to Hawaii’s complete lack of temperature variations, but otherwise fine). All our possessions were intact, though smoky, with the exception of a pair of boxers that was too near the floor vent in our bedroom. By the time we had moved our possessions out of the house, all our feet were soot black.

(The only total loss among our possessions)

Finally, with the practical side taken care of, I heard the men’s perspective on the fire. They, particularly my father-in-law, had been at the house directing the firemen and women to the source of the fire and asking questions. It turns out that among the features of this fancy rental house were not only a rooftop solar installation, but a rack of lithium-ion batteries in the crawl space under the house to store the excess energy. The assembly was several batteries thick and high and several feet long, all crowded together.

There is a LOT of energy in a lithium-ion battery.

There is a reason the post office asks you not to mail lithium-ion batteries except under certain restricted circumstances. Compartments inside these batteries can break down and cause a short circuit, making them spontaneously ignite, releasing all their energy. And if an entirely okay lithium-ion battery is sitting next to a burning one, guess what might happen to all its little internal compartments? The word “meltdown” seems appropriate. And what might make these little compartments break down? Being subjected to sudden forces might do it. Like being shifted around in a box in the mail. Or like in a 5.3 magnitude earthquake. It only takes one faulty battery in the rack to start a chain reaction, and all of a sudden, at 3 in the morning, you’re gathering up your children while yelling, “FIRE!”

In fact, the fire in the crawl space had caught the structural beams. The one directly under our bed, which had been a sturdy 4 x 6, was burned through with only nails remaining. Although the bedroom floor was still okay to walk on, if we had waited another 5 or 10 minutes to call 911 it might have caved in.  

We returned to Oahu that afternoon, still smelling smoky. I spent the next week washing every stitch of clothing we had taken on vacation with a cup each of baking soda and vinegar, which did a decent job of removing the scent. And these days, when I am awakened in the middle of the night (for example, by a robot call from the mainland programmed by someone who didn’t account for the existence of the 50^th state with its 6-hour time difference from the East Coast), it takes a little while for my heart rate to go down and for me to return to sleep. The owners of the fancy rental house have it worse, since smoke pervaded everything and they’ll have an immensely expensive and time-consuming repair job to do, including restoring the structural integrity of the crawl space.

There is much to be thankful for in the timing of the fire. If it had happened any earlier, we would have needed to find another place to sleep and to deal with the mountains of laundry. If it had happened a day later, when no one else was scheduled to stay in the house, it could well have burned to the ground before anyone called the fire department. We all got out quickly enough to avoid inhaling many toxic fumes and none of us suffered lingering physical effects, not even my father-in-law who went back in to search for his keys once everyone else was out. Almost all our possessions were relatively easy to return to their previous condition. After such a sumptuous vacation rental, our own home might have seemed unattractive, but it was a comforting haven – where it was easy to breathe – which was a relief after working in the noxious house after the fire. And, after all, we achieved one of those time-honored vacation goals: family memories!