As the death toll from a wildfire that razed a historic Maui town reached 93, authorities on Saturday said that the effort to find and identify the dead was still in its early stages.
It is already the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century.
Crews with cadaver dogs have covered just 3 percent of the search area, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said.
Photo: AFP
“We’ve got an area that we have to contain that is at least 5 square miles [13km2] and it is full of our loved ones,” he said, adding that the death toll is likely to grow and “none of us really know the size of it yet.”
He spoke as federal emergency workers picked through the ashen moonscape left by the fire that razed the centuries-old town of Lahaina. Teams marked the ruins of homes with a bright orange “X” to record an initial search, and “HR” when they found human remains.
Pelletier said that identifying the dead is extremely challenging because “we pick up the remains and they fall apart... When we find our family and our friends, the remains that we’re finding is through a fire that melted metal.”
Two people have been identified so far, he said.
Dogs worked the rubble, and their occasional bark — used to alert their handlers to a possible corpse — echoed over the hot and colorless landscape.
“It will certainly be the worst natural disaster that Hawaii ever faced,” Hawaiian Governor Josh Green said as he toured the devastation on historic Front Street. “We can only wait and support those who are living. Our focus now is to reunite people when we can and get them housing and get them health care, and then turn to rebuilding.”
At least 2,200 buildings were damaged or destroyed in West Maui, Green said, of which 86 percent were residential.
Across the island, the damage was estimated at close to US$6 billion, he said.
It would take “an incredible amount of time” to recover, he added.
At least two other fires have been burning on Maui, with no fatalities reported thus far: in south Maui’s Kihei area and in the mountainous, inland communities known as Upcountry.
A fourth broke out on Friday evening in Kaanapali, a coastal community north of Lahaina, but crews were able to extinguish it, authorities said.
Emergency managers in Maui were searching for places to house people displaced from their homes. As many as 4,500 people are in need of shelter, county officials wrote on Facebook early on Saturday, citing figures from the US Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Pacific Disaster Center.
Pelletier encouraged those with missing family members to go to the family assistance center.
“We need you to do the DNA test. We need to identify your loved ones,” he said.
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