Mick Fleetwood says his restaurant has been lost in Maui wildfires: "We are heartbroken"
The devastating Hawaii wildfires that tore through Maui killed scores of people and destroyed thousands of homes, businesses or other structures on the island. Among them, Mick Fleetwood says his restaurant was also lost.
The rock legend posted a statement on his Instagram that his restaurant, Fleetwood's on Front Street, was burned down amid the fires that have wiped out Lahaina, the historic town that both he and the restaurant have called home for several decades.
"This is a devastating moment for MAUl and many are suffering unimaginable loss," he wrote Thursday. "Fleetwoods on front Street has been lost and while we are heartbroken our main priority is the safety of our dear staff and team members."
Fleetwood, the British drummer behind Fleetwood Mac, later spoke to CBS News' Carter Evans about the loss of his beloved community.
"This is my home," Fleetwood said in an interview that aired Monday on "CBS Mornings." "Nowhere else."
When the flames began to spread in Lahaina, he was in Los Angeles visiting family. He immediately began buying emergency supplies, then packed them onto a plane and flew to Maui to help his community and employees.
"Many of them had lost their homes," he told CBS News. "I think had I been here, I still would have felt helpless, but not as helpless. There are people still in dire, dire, dire straights, emotionally. ... The enormity of this is not known. But the real loss, is the sadness that we're all facing, is loss of life, preserving what is there, in the immediacy of help."
Fleetwood is committed to trying to preserve and rebuild Maui — and suggested a benefit concert could be part of it.
"I think music is a largely powerful medium," he said. "Thoughts are already on hand."
"There's no doubt that my intention is to be either part of things to create within something to keep this on the tip of people's thought process," he continued. "And it's something I can do. It's something I aspire to be doing. That's what I trust."
Much of Hawaii was under a red flag warning for fire risk when the wildfires broke out, but the exact cause of the blaze is still unknown. Some Maui residents who escaped the deadly fires aid they received no official warnings as the flames closed in.
The Lahaina blaze is now the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, with a death toll surpassing the 2018 Camp Fire in California, which killed at least 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise.