Her restaurant in ruins, a Maui chef shifts to feeding the island’s evacuees.

On Tuesday morning, Lee Anne Wong was at the airport in Honolulu and getting ready to fly home to Maui, where she is the executive chef of Papa’aina at the historic Pioneer Inn in Lahaina. Aware of the wildfires, Ms. Wong and her team decided to close the restaurant early and send everyone home — just hours before wildfires ripped through the entire town.

By the time she flew back to Maui on Wednesday, she could see from the air that “it was just black and smoke and ash.”

When she spoke to some of her employees, they conveyed to her just how fast — and devastating — the fires had been. The Pioneer Inn — which is close to Lahaina’s famed banyan tree — has been leveled, along with everything else, she said.

“Smoke alarms were going off,” she said. “People were running for their lives. I have many friends whose homes were burned down to the ground.”

One employee was still unaccounted for, she said.

“It happened very, very fast,” said Ms. Wong, 46, who moved to Hawaii a decade ago from New York City, where she was the executive chef of the French Culinary Institute. “A lot of employees are in shelters in the same set of clothes, and they are just thinking about their next meal.”

“I’m thankful for the people who made it out alive,” said Ms. Wong, who is also the chef and owner of the Koko Head Cafe in Honolulu, “but an entire town has burned down.”

The Pioneer Inn was known for a parrot, Alex, who regaled guests. He made it out alive, Ms. Wong said, “but again, there are thousands of pets who didn’t.”

Ms. Wong is now working out of the University of Hawaii’s Maui campus with World Central Kitchen, the global nonprofit organization founded by the chef José Andrés, as well as local business owners to prepare meals for evacuees.