Some Fire Survivors Say Flames Reached Them Before Evacuation Orders

Carl Cudworth, 63, evacuated his home in Lahaina with his wife, Laurie Prozezinski, 52, and the rest of their family after Mr. Cudworth received an urgent notification on his cellphone around 2 p.m. on Tuesday.

The alert, which showed up in red text on a white background, blared loudly three times, unlike any other noise Mr. Cudworth had heard from his phone before. “Kind of like a fire engine,” he said. After he opened his phone to read the message, it disappeared, he said, but it was enough to get them to flee the town.

Another resident, Ernesto Perez, 42, said that with a serious brush fire reported, he had kept an ear out on Tuesday in case the island’s emergency sirens blared. They never did, but before he knew it, a powerful gust of wind shrouded his apartment building with thick smoke around 5 p.m.

Mr. Perez gathered his mother and four daughters and they piled into his pickup truck. Behind them, he said, the building was ablaze. Mr. Perez drove away as fast as he could, maneuvering his way around blocked roads.

“It was basically raining fire,” Mr. Perez said. “All over.”

Robbie Wares, who has lived in Lahaina for decades, said the only warning she got was from someone — it was not clear who it was — shouting out of a moving vehicle that passed by her house. She fled as she saw the skies darkening and filling with smoke.

“They didn’t get out of the car,” she said of whoever was giving the warnings. “If I hadn’t been home, I wouldn’t have heard.”

Jill Cowan, Gaya Gupta and Michael Levenson contributed reporting.