2023-08-13 06:48:02
LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — As the death toll in a wildfire that ripped through a historic Maui town reached 89, authorities warned Saturday that efforts to identify the dead were still in their early stages. It was already the deadliest fire in the United States in a century.
Tracker dog teams had barely covered 3% of the search area, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said.
“We have an area that we have to contain that is at least 5 square miles (about 13 square kilometers) and it is full of our loved ones,” he explained. The death toll is likely to rise “and none of us yet know its caliber,” he added.
Pelletier spoke as emergency workers searched the ashen landscape left behind by flames that burned down the century-old town of Lahaina. The teams marked the ruins of the houses with a bright orange X to indicate a preliminary search, and the initials HR when they found human remains.
Pelletier said investigating the deaths was a huge challenge because “we lift the remains and they fall apart… When we found our family and our friends, the remains we found went through a fire that melted the metal.” Two people have been identified so far, he said.
The dogs worked among the rubble, their occasional bark—used to alert their handlers to a possible corpse—resounding across a colorless landscape.
“It will certainly be the worst natural disaster Hawaii has ever faced,” Governor Josh Green said Saturday as he walked along devastated Front Street. “There is nothing left to do but wait and support those who survived. people when we can and give them shelter and medical care, and then dedicate ourselves to rebuilding.”
At least 2,220 buildings were damaged or destroyed in West Maui, Green said, 86% of which were residential. Island-wide, she added, damage was estimated to be around $6 billion. Recovery will take “an incredible amount of time,” she noted.
At least two other fires were burning on Maui, with no fatalities so far, in the southern Kihei area and in inland mountain towns known as the Upcountry. A fourth fire broke out Friday night in Kaanapali, a coastal town north of Lahaina, though crews were able to put it out, authorities said.
The fire in the mountains had affected 544 structures, according to Green, 96% of them residential.
Emergency workers on Maui were looking for shelters for the displaced people. Up to 4,500 people were in need of shelter, county officials said on Facebook Saturday morning, citing figures from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Pacific Disaster Center.
Pelletier urged people with missing family members to go to the help center and get DNA tests to identify their loved ones.
Green said authorities would review protocols and policies to improve security.
“People ask us why we review what happened and it is because the world has changed. Now a storm can be a hurricane-fire or a fire-hurricane,” she said. “That’s what we’ve experienced and that’s why we’re looking at these policies, to see how we can better protect our people.”
Lahaina resident Riley Curran expressed doubt that county officials could have done more, given the speed at which the flames were spreading. He fled his Front Street home after viewing the fire from the roof of an adjoining building.
“It’s not like people haven’t tried to do anything,” Curran said. “The fire went from zero to 100.”
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Kelleher reported from Honolulu and Dupuy from New York. Associated Press writers Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho; Andrew Selsky in Bend, Oregon; Bobby Caina Calvan in New York; Audrey McAvoy in Wailuku, Hawaii; Ty O’Neil in Lahaina, Hawaii; and Lisa J. Adams Wagner in Evans, Georgia contributed to this report.
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