The Search for The Dead Nears Its End on The Wild Fires

 A long row of metal structures, seemingly parts of destroyed buildings, twisted and blackened by fire.

Much of Lahaina was destroyed by a fast-moving wildfire on Maui.Credit...Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Adeel Hassan

By Adeel Hassan

NYTimes

 

The latest:

The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning through 6 p.m. local time on Thursday, saying that the western parts of Maui and the other Hawaiian islands faced a high risk of fire because of gusty winds and low humidity. But forecasters said that the winds would not be as intense as the ones that stoked the deadly wildfires on Aug. 8.

A daylong vigil will be observed on Friday across Hawaii, consisting of a sunrise, noon and sunset ceremony, and centered on “emotional and spiritual healing that is rooted in Native Hawaiian practices,” according to the event website.

The E.P.A. is beginning to remove hazardous material from the approximately 2,200 destroyed structures in the Lahaina burn area, now that the land search for victims is finished.

The official death toll has remained at 115 for several days and may not go much higher. Maui County has publicly identified 49 people after notifying their families.

The White House said on Wednesday that it would provide $95 million to improve Hawaii’s electric grid.

Three weeks after wildfires swept across Maui, Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii announced that 99 percent of the search of the burn area had been completed. He and other officials have acknowledged that some of the dead may never be found or identified.

Maui’s police chief, John Pelletier, said on Tuesday that teams continued to search the remaining 1 percent of the burn area: the water 200 yards out along a four-mile stretch of coastline. No human remains have yet been found in the water off Lahaina, the centuries-old town of 13,000 that was largely destroyed.

The land search-and-rescue crews, including cadaver dogs and forensic anthropologists, combed for bone fragments through the ash in the burn area. Without fingerprints or dental records that can be used to identify human remains, officials have resorted to DNA testing. But they have said that the shortage of DNA samples from victims’ close family members is slowing the already painstaking identification process.

While the F.B.I. is working to vet a list of up to 1,100 people who were initially reported missing, Maui officials released a list of 388 people last Thursday for whom officials had full names, as well as contact information for the person who had reported them missing. 

Officials implored anyone who knew that a person on the list was safe to contact them. They received more than 100 responses within one day. On Tuesday, Chief Pelletier said another 100 had since responded.

By making the names public, the authorities hoped to narrow the tally of the missing. But it can take months or even years of forensic analysis and DNA testing to identify the dead, similar to the aftermaths of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the wildfire that devastated Paradise, Calif.

 

A man and a woman sit amid burned rubble, sifting through the debris.

Residents searching for their belongings in Lahaina.Credit...Philip Cheung for The New York Times

The death toll seems certain to keep rising.

The death toll of at least 115 marks the fires on Maui one of the worst natural disasters in Hawaii’s history and the nation’s deadliest since 1918, when blazes in northeast Minnesota killed hundreds of people.

The slow pace of identifying victims was dictated, officials said, by the large-scale destruction and by Maui’s remoteness, which complicated the arrival of out-of-state search dog teams. About 340 emergency personnel and 50 canine units participated at the peak of the search.

 People sit or lie on air mattresses and cots, talking or looking at their phones, at a shelter.

Evacuees at a shelter in Wailuku, Hawaii.Credit...Max Whittaker for The New York Times

Displaced residents have been moved to hotels.

Emergency shelters, which housed more than 2,000 people the day after the fires broke out, have been emptied, and displaced residents are staying in hotels, in an effort coordinated by the American Red Cross. They will be housed and fed there through at least the spring, officials said.

County and federal aid efforts gathered pace over the last few weeks, after frustrated residents in West Maui initially said that they were receiving far more help from an ad hoc network of charitable organizations and volunteers than they were from the government.

As of this week, about 11,000 assistance registrations have been received by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with $14.6 million in federal housing and individual assistance provided, officials said.

Governor Green said that 6,000 people were living in hotels and Airbnb units.

The cause of the fire that devastated Lahaina is under debate.

Experts said one possibility was that active power lines that fell in high winds had ignited a fire that ultimately consumed Lahaina.

 

Maui County officials have claimed in a lawsuit that the “intentional and malicious” mismanagement of power lines by Hawaiian Electric, the state’s leading utility, had allowed flames to spark. Law firms have also filed suits on behalf of victims, claiming that the utility was at fault for having power equipment that could not withstand heavy winds, and for keeping power lines electrified despite warnings of high winds amplified by a hurricane hundreds of miles away.

Hawaiian Electric acknowledged this week that its power lines had ignited a fire early on the morning of Aug. 8. But it said that its lines weren’t carrying any current by the time flames erupted in the midafternoon and destroyed Lahaina. The cause of that second “afternoon fire,” the utility said, had not yet been determined.

Earlier this week, Shelee Kimura, the chief executive of Hawaiian Electric, called the county’s lawsuit “factually and legally irresponsible.”

Worsening drought conditions in recent weeks probably also contributed. Nearly 16 percent of Maui County was in a severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

What’s next?

There are widespread fears that rebuilding will be difficult or impossible for many residents. State and local officials are considering a moratorium on sales of damaged or destroyed properties to prevent outsiders from taking advantage of the tragedy. Hawaii’s attorney general, Anne E. Lopez, told property owners in the burn area to report any unsolicited offers to buy their properties. “Preying on people who suffered the most from the tragedy on Maui is despicable,” she said on Monday. 

And the Hawaii Tourism Authority said visitors planning to travel to West Maui within the next several months should delay their trips or find another destination. Most of the 1,000 rooms in the area have been set aside for evacuees and rescue workers.

The hit to the tourism industry presents a major challenge to rebuilding the island’s economy.

A longer-term worry is the changing climate.

The area burned by wildfires in Hawaii each year has quadrupled in recent decades. Invasive grasses that leave the islands increasingly susceptible to wildfires and climate change have worsened dry and hot conditions in the state, allowing wildfires to spread more quickly, climatologists say.

Mapping the Damage From the Maui Wildfires

Fires tore through Maui and leveled entire neighborhoods.

Ivan Penn, Kellen Browning and Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting.

Adeel Hassan is a reporter and editor on the National Desk. He is a founding member of Race/Related, and much of his work focuses on identity and discrimination. He started the Morning Briefing for NYT Now and was its inaugural writer. He also served as an editor on the International Desk.  More about Adeel Hassan