After five hours in ocean, Maui fire survivor is ‘blessed to be alive’

Choose your plan ArrowRight “I don’t know if it was the smoke or the cold or the fumes,” Cochran, 30, recounted in a telephone interview. Another of their neighbors, an 86-year-old man who for a time survived nearby, did not live through the night, she said. In the afternoon, the wind whipped up, so strong that Cochran began taking videos of the flying leaves. AdvertisementCochran, a Maryland native who works as a training manager for an ocean conservation nonprofit, went to take a shower. Cochran saw people grab debris and float off into deeper waters, which horrified her: She works on the ocean and knows the dangers of currents and hypothermia.