CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Burned-out cars sat in what used to be a garage yesterday after an early morning Papakolea fire that destroyed at least one home and damaged others.

Dawn blaze destroys home, damages nearby houses

‘Huge fire’ early Wednesday morning in Papakolea also gutted garage, cars,

A Papakolea house burned to the ground and two other homes were damaged yesterday in a spectacular fire just before dawn.

Firefighters were dispatched at 5:56 a.m. to 2401 Tantalus Drive, fire officials said. A wooden house and its garage were engulfed in flames, said Honolulu Fire Department spokesman Capt. Terry Seelig. No one was home when the fire started. A man who lives in the house had left earlier, Seelig said.

Flames and smoke were visible from the city below, and the smell of smoke was noticeable in Kakaako.

CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Firefighters put water on hot spots yesterday at the scene of a Papakolea fire.

By 8 a.m. firefighters were cooling down the charred remains so investigators could determine the cause.

No damage estimate was available as of last night, and the cause was still under investigation.

A neighboring house sustained fire damage to the exterior and smoke damage inside. Another house next door sustained heat and smoke damage.

Two people live in one of the damaged houses, and Lei Saffery lives in the other home with four other adults and her four children. Saffery and her children were home when the fire began.

"It was a huge fire, very hot," Saffery said. She said neighbors used garden hoses to limit damage to the neighboring houses.

Saffery said she heard a loud noise, and at first worried it was domestic violence, before she saw the high flames whip up to the second-floor balcony area of her two-story home.

Saffery's four children, three girls and a boy, learned about escape plans during Fire Prevention Week last week in school.

Saffery said their homework was to draw out an escape route and write about it, and they practiced it together as a family.

Today the family moved away from the side of the house where the blaze occurred, and all the children met across the street, Saffery said. Seelig praised the family for doing the right thing and reminded residents to have their own escape plans.

"The kids knew what to do," Saffery said. "There's a difference between drawing it on paper and actually doing it. We wanted to put it into practice."