LAHAINA, HAWAII (AP) – Hawaii’s governor warned that scores more people could be found dead following ferocious wildfires on Maui, as search and rescue crews scoured neighbourhoods street by street and prepared to comb through buildings charred by flames that galloped a mile a minute.
The blazes, which consumed most of the historic town of Lahaina, are already the deadliest in the United States in more than a century, with a toll of 96.
Two fires have not yet been completely contained, according to an update from Maui County late on Sunday.
“We are prepared for many tragic stories,” Governor Josh Green told CBS Mornings in a recorded interview that was aired yesterday. “They will find 10 to 20 people per day, probably, until they finish. And it’s probably going to take 10 days. It’s impossible to guess, really.”
As cell phone service has slowly been restored, Green had said that the number of people missing dropped to about 1,300 from over 2,000.
Twenty cadaver dogs and dozens of people are making their way through blocks reduced to ash.
“Right now, they’re going street by street, block by block between cars, and soon they’ll start to enter buildings,” the director of public affairs for the Hawaii Department of Defence Jeff Hickman, said yesterday on NBC’s Today.
Such crews had covered just three per cent of the search area, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said on Saturday. The blaze that swept into centuries-old Lahaina nearly a week ago destroyed nearly every building in the town of 13,000, leaving a grid of gray rubble wedged between the blue ocean and lush green slopes.
That fire has been 85 per cent contained, according to the county, while the Upcountry fire has been 60 per cent contained.
