Maui wildfire death toll soars to 93 as locals warned number of fatalities will likely rise

The death toll from the Hawaii wildfires has soared to 93, authorities said as they warned the number could rise as the search for remains continues.

The fatal blaze is already the deadliest wildfire in US history for over a century.

Authorities said on Saturday local time that efforts to find and identify the dead are still in their early stages.

Crews with cadaver dogs have covered just three per cent of the search area, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said.

“We’ve got an area that we have to contain that is at least five square miles and it is full of our loved ones,” Mr Pelletier said, noting that the death toll is likely to grow and “none of us really know the size of it yet.”

Mr Pelletier said 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.

“It will certainly be the worst natural disaster that Hawaii ever faced,” the US state’s governor Josh Green said on Saturday as he toured the devastation on historic Front Street, a popular shopping and dining spot.

“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, Mr Green said, of which 86 per cent were residential. The cost of the devastation across the island was estimated at close to $6bn, he added. Mr Green said it would take “an incredible amount of time” to recover.

At least two other fires have been burning on Maui. No fatalities have been reported from these wildfires in south Maui’s Kihei area and in the mountainous, inland communities known as Upcountry.

The Upcountry fire had affected 544 structures, of which 96 per cent were residential, Mr Green said.

A fourth broke out Friday evening in Kaanapali, a coastal community north of Lahaina, but crews were able to extinguish it, authorities said.

As many as 4,500 people are in need of shelter, county officials said on Facebook, citing figures from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Pacific Disaster Center.

Disaster responders are searching for places to house people displaced from their homes.

People with missing family members have been advised to go to the family assistance centre so work can begin to match them with their relatives.

“We need you to do the DNA test. We need to identify your loved ones,” Mr Pelletier told residents.

Some residents have already been confronted with the tragic fate of their friends and relatives.

Retired fire captain Geoff Bogar and his friend of 35 years, Franklin Trejos, initially stayed behind to help others in Lahaina, the largest tourist hotspot on Maui, and save Mr Bogar’s house. But as the flames moved closer and closer Tuesday afternoon, they knew they had to escape.

Each fled to his own car. When Mr Bogar’s wouldn’t start, he broke through a window to get out, then crawled on the ground until a police patrol found him and brought him to a hospital.

Mr Trejos did not survive. When Mr Bogar returned the next day, he found the bones of his 68-year-old friend in the back seat of his car, lying on top of the remains of the Bogars’ beloved three-year-old golden retriever Sam, whom he had tried to protect.

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A native of Costa Rica, Mr Trejos had lived for years with Mr Bogar and his wife, Shannon Weber-Bogar, helping her with her seizures when her husband couldn’t.

Hawaii emergency management records do not indicate the warning sirens sounded before fire hit the town and widespread power and cellular outages may have limited the reach of alerts to mobile phones, televisions and radio stations.

Riley Curran, a Lahaina resident, said he doubted that county officials could have done more, given the speed of the ferocious flames.

“It’s not that people didn’t try to do anything,” Mr Curran said. “The fire went from zero to 100.”

“It outpaced anything firefighters could have done in the early hours,” US fire administrator Lori Moore-Merrell said.

Lahaina and Kula residents have been warned by water officials not to drink running water, which may be contaminated even after boiling, and to only take short, lukewarm showers in well-ventilated rooms to avoid possible chemical vapour exposure.

The wildfires are Hawaii’s deadliest natural disaster in decades, surpassing a 1960 tsunami that killed 61 people.

The latest death toll also surpassed that of the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California, which left 85 dead and destroyed the town of Paradise.