It took 24 hours. On Saturday, Tom and Carrie Bashaw had a home they had designed and built themselves on Maui.
By Sunday evening, the house, the garage and the land beneath them had been ripped apart by floodwater and swept into a river.
The couple, both 80, are now sleeping on air mattresses inside a storage container with their cats.
The property sat outside the designated flood zone. They had no flood insurance.
A quiet stream became a torrent
The destruction was caused by violent storms that battered Maui over the weekend.
A stream running behind the Bashaws’ property swelled into a raging river, eroding the land, felling trees and undercutting the foundations of the house.
Their daughter Stephanie Ichinose described the sequence. “The rushing water had eroded the land and felled all the trees right up to their lanai,” she said.
“They evacuated, taking their most precious items and their cats. By morning, the floodwaters had swelled so severely that it undercut their property and half of their home had collapsed and was washed away.
By the end of the day, the rest of the home and the garage were lost as well.”
Footage of the house collapsing into the river has been viewed more than 2.2 million times online.
No flood zone, no cover
The Bashaws’ property was not classified as being in a flood zone, which meant flood insurance was not a requirement and the couple did not carry it.
It is a detail that transforms the story from devastating to financially catastrophic.
Without cover, the cost of everything that was lost falls on an elderly couple who are currently living in a storage container.
Ichinose said losing so much so suddenly has been overwhelming.
“They are doing their best to get through this incredibly difficult time with support from their caring neighbours and community.”
GoFundMe passes $60,000
Ichinose has launched a GoFundMe page to help her parents, which has already raised more than $60,000.
The money will go towards temporary housing, replacing essential belongings, debris removal and beginning the process of rebuilding.
“We are asking for any support you may be able to give to help them begin the long process of recovery,” she said.
Why it matters
The Bashaws’ story will resonate with anyone who has ever looked at a flood zone map and assumed that being outside it meant being safe.
Flood zones are based on historical data and probability models. They do not account for what happens when a storm exceeds those models, which is happening with increasing frequency.
An 80-year-old couple who did everything by the book, built their own home, maintained it, chose a location outside the risk zone, still lost everything in a single day.
The viral footage has already pushed their fundraiser well past its initial target, but no amount of GoFundMe donations changes the fact that the system designed to protect homeowners from exactly this scenario did not apply to them.
The Bashaws are on air mattresses with their cats. The river that took their house is still there. Maui is still cleaning up.
