DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM As firefighters arrived yesterday at a fire at 1631 Hauiki St. in Kalihi, Beatrice Jim, far right, asked that her house be protected against the spreading flames from the burning house of neighbor Maria Amian, who was escorted by a firefighter. Damage to the house and contents was estimated at $225,000.

Fire does
$225,000 damage
to Kalihi home

Family members lament the loss
of irreplaceable photos

---

By Lisa Asato
lasato@starbulletin.com

Precious family photos went up in flames, but no one was hurt in a fire that raged through the second floor of a Kalihi home yesterday.

The greatest loss was a photo collage put together for the funeral of family patriarch Eugene Amian, said granddaughter Marie Jane Amian.

Everyone in the family -- children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren -- contributed photos, she said.

"It was something we could have shared with our kids, something we would have been able to pass down to the next generations," she said, adding that the second floor was filled with more family photos that her grandfather framed and hung himself.

"That's one thing our family loves is pictures," Amian, 27, said. "Right now that's the most tragic; everything else we can replace."

DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM Neighbor Beatrice Jim, left, comforted Gilda Amian yesterday as Amian's house, to the left, burned. Amian said the smoke alarm went off as she and other family members were eating breakfast downstairs. She said she had her husband shut off the electricity and they evacuated the house just before 8 a.m. Two neighboring homes were also damaged by the heat.

Her 61-year-old mother, Gilda Amian, called the destruction "the most terrible thing that happened in my life."

"You cannot think of what you want to save; you can't think of anything," she said. "The valuables were all upstairs. Everything is gone."

Gilda Amian said she was at home with her husband, Victor, and his 85-year-old mother having breakfast when the smoke alarm went off. When Amian went to check, all she saw was smoke.

"I (didn't) see no flame, no fire, but lots of smoke," she said. "I was crying, telling (the 911 operator) to hurry up."

Firefighters had the fire at 1631 Hauiki St. under control 15 minutes after the alarm at 8:14 a.m., said Honolulu Fire Department spokesman Capt. Richard Soo. He said the fire started in the grandmother's bedroom on the second floor. The cause was under investigation.

Soo said the house was "unlivable." Damage to the home and its contents was $225,000. Two neighboring homes were damaged by the heat, he said.

The American Red Cross Hawaii chapter provided the five family members who lived in the home with temporary shelter.

Gilda Amian said the family has insurance and will probably rebuild.

"The main thing is we're alive," she said. "That's the main thing anyway right now. We can find a solution."

Rose Marie, 19, a Honolulu Community College student, lost schoolbooks and a computer in the fire. "You see your home burnt down, it's just the hardest," she said.

Cousin Arceli Redfern said her grandfather had moved into the house in the 1960s.

"This is the place they (other family from the Philippines) would come to first before moving on to their own place," she said, adding that her grandfather built the second story to accommodate more family.

"There's a lot of memories in that house, and now it's gone," she said.