The loss of life from the wildfires that have ravaged Maui rose to 67 on Friday as firefighting crews continue to fight the deadliest natural disaster in Hawaii’s history.
Authorities confirmed 12 more fatalities as of Friday afternoon, bringing the total above the 61 confirmed deaths from a tsunami in Hilo in 1960.
Hawaii governor Josh Green said on Friday, “Without a doubt, there will be more fatalities. We do not know, ultimately, how many will have occurred.”
“We have not yet searched in the interior of the buildings. We’re waiting for Fema to help with that search as they are equipped to handle the hazmat conditions of the building,” said Richard Bissen, Maui county mayor, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Meanwhile, residents of Lahaina were being allowed to return home for the first time to assess the damage.
Associated Press journalists witnessed the devastation, with nearly every building flattened to debris on Front Street, the heart of the Maui community and the economic hub of the island. The roosters known to roam Hawaii streets meandered through the ashes of what was left, including an eerie traffic jam of the charred remains of dozens of cars that didn’t make it out of the inferno.
Incinerated cars crushed by downed telephone poles. Charred elevator shafts standing as testaments to the burned-down apartment buildings they once served. Pools filled with charcoal-colored water. Trampolines and children’s scooters mangled by the extreme heat.
“It hit so quick, it was incredible,” Lahaina resident Kyle Scharnhorst said as he surveyed his apartment complex’s damage in the morning. “It was like a war zone.”
Three days after the tragedy, Maui is mourning the loss of life and land, while questions are emerging about the official response to the fires.
Officials confirmed late on Thursday that Hawaii’s emergency management records show no indication that public warning sirens were triggered, despite what the state describes as the largest integrated outdoor all-hazard public safety warning system in the world.
“There was no warning. There was absolutely none. Nobody came around. We didn’t see a fire truck or anybody,” said Lynn Robinson, who lost her home in the fire.
Instead, the county sent emergency alerts to mobile phones, televisions and radio stations. But power and cellphone service outages may have impacted their reach.
Marlon Vasquez, a 31-year-old cook from Guatemala, said by the time he heard fire alarms it was already too late to flee in his car.
“I opened the door, and the fire was almost on top of us,” he said from an evacuation center at a gymnasium. “We ran and ran. We ran almost the whole night and into the next day, because the fire didn’t stop.”
By Thursday afternoon, firefighters managed to build perimeters around most of the Lahaina fire and another near the resort-filled area of Kihei, but they were still not fully contained. Thousands of structures were confirmed destroyed.
“Lahaina, with a few rare exceptions, has been burned down. Without a doubt, it feels like a bomb was dropped on Lahaina,” the Hawaii governor, Josh Green, said after walking the ruins of the town on Thursday morning with the mayor.
“The recovery’s going to be extraordinarily complicated, but we do want people to get back to their homes and just do what they can to assess safely, because it’s pretty dangerous,” Green told Hawaii News Now.
“Understand this: Lahaina Town is hallowed, sacred ground right now because our iwi are in that ground,” the Maui police chief, John Pelletier, said at an afternoon news conference, referring to ancestral remains. “We have to get them out. We will get them out as fast as we can. But I need your patience while we do this.”
A government spreadsheet of names of Lahaina residents indicates that hundreds of people remain unaccounted for, especially with communications systems badly affected.
West Maui remains without water and power and search efforts are continuing, the county statement says. One zone remains restricted with no access due to continuing hazardous conditions.
Maui authorities also faced questions about the disaster response. Some survivors of the fire took to social media complaining that the authorities are being too harsh on members of the public trying to bring vital supplies into the Lahaina area to help those stuck and those who want to get out but do not have gas for their vehicles.
One such video posted by a Lahaina resident, Pa’ele Kulani, has gone viral after he claimed locals were being turned away by authorities at roadblocks.
Kulani’s grandmother’s house burned down in Lahaina, he said on Instagram, and he is sheltering her and others in his house, which is intact, but where he is running out of food and water to supply those he is sheltering.
He said people were unable to obtain propane or, vitally, fuel for their cars.
“People want to leave, but they don’t have the gas to leave,” he said, adding that his grandmother needed medicine that he needed to travel to obtain but daren’t in case the authorities barred him from returning.
“People are suffering,” he said. Many across the archipelago reposted the video across social media platforms and one concerned resident on Hawaii Island tagged the state’s Democratic governor for help.
After a dry summer, strong winds racing from a region of high pressure to fill an area of low pressure created by a hurricane 500 miles to the south of Hawaii have been blamed for fanning the flames.
Officials don’t know yet exactly how the brush fire started.
But a lack of rainfall and combustible non-native grasses and vegetation are blamed for intensifying the emergency. Nearly a fifth of Maui is in severe drought, according to the US Drought Monitor.
Elizabeth Pickett, co-executive director of the Hawaii wildfire management organization, said fire could result in soil erosion, adding to the issue of invasive species. “The only thing that can really handle living there in many cases are more of those invasive species,” Pickett said. “It’s systemic. Air, land and water are all impacted.”
Lahaina’s wildfire risk is well known. Maui county’s hazard mitigation plan, last updated in 2020, identified Lahaina and other West Maui communities as having frequent wildfires and a large number of buildings at risk of wildfire damage.
The plan also noted that West Maui, where Lahaina is located, had the island’s highest population of people living in multi-unit housing, the second-highest rate of households without a vehicle and the highest rate of non-English speakers.
“This may limit the population’s ability to receive, understand and take expedient action during hazard events,” the plan noted.
Bobby Lee, the president of the Hawaii firefighters association, said the island’s firefighting capability may also have been hampered by a small staff and no off-road vehicles.
“You’re basically dealing with trying to fight a blowtorch,” Lee said.
Lahaina resident Lana Vierra was eager to return even though she knows the home she raised five children in is no longer there.
“To actually stand there on your burnt grounds and get your wheels turning on how to move forward – I think it will give families that peace,” she said.
When she fled Tuesday, she thought it would be temporary. She spent Friday morning filling out Fema assistance forms at a relative’s house in Haiku.
She was eager to see Lahaina but unsure how she would feel once there, thinking about the sheds in the back that housed family mementos.
“My kids’ yearbooks and all that kind of stuff. Their baby pictures,” Vierra said. “That’s what hurts a mother the most.”
