Death toll from Maui fires hits at least 80, damages at billions of dollars
By Mike Blake and Marco Garcia
KAHULUI, Hawaii (Reuters) — The scale of the Maui wildfires' destruction came into sharper focus on Saturday, as officials warned the death toll of 80 would likely rise and search teams with cadaver dogs sifted through the charred ruins of Lahaina looking for more victims.
The cost to rebuild the historic resort town was estimated at $5.5 billion, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), after the fast-moving flames consumed more than 1,000 buildings and leveled almost the entire town.
Officials vowed to examine the state's emergency notification systems after some residents questioned whether more could have been done to warn people before the fire overtook their homes. Some were forced to wade into the Pacific Ocean to escape.
Sirens stationed around the island — intended to warn of impending natural disasters — never sounded, and widespread power and cellular outages hampered other forms of alerts.
The state's attorney general, Anne Lopez, said she was launching a review of the decision-making both before and during the fire, while Governor Josh Green told CNN he had authorized a review of the emergency response.
Local officials have described a nightmarish confluence of factors, including communications network failures, powerful wind gusts from an offshore hurricane and a separate wildfire dozens of miles away, that made it nearly impossible to coordinate in real time with the emergency management agencies that would typically issue warnings and evacuation orders.
The death toll made the inferno, which erupted on Tuesday, Hawaii's worst natural disaster in history, surpassing a 1961 tsunami that killed 61 people a year after Hawaii became a U.S. state.
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