International

Hawaii: Maui Fire Death Toll Reaches 106

Photo: Reuters

August 16|

A mobile morgue unit arrived Tuesday to assist Hawaii officials working hard to identify remains, while Maui County released the names of people who died in the wildfire that nearly incinerated the historic town of Lahaina a week ago and brought the death toll to 106.

The county named two victims, Lahaina residents Robert Dyckman, 74, and Buddy Jantoc, 79, and added in a statement that three other victims were identified.

Those names will be released once the county has identified next of kin.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services deployed a team of medical examiners, pathologists and technicians along with examination tables, X-ray units and other equipment to identify the victims and process the remains, said Jonathan Greene, the agency’s deputy assistant secretary for response.

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“It’s going to be a very, very difficult mission,” Greene said. “And patience is going to be incredibly important because of the number of victims.”

A week after a fire swept through historic Lahaina, many survivors began moving into hundreds of hotel rooms set aside for displaced locals as donations of food, ice, water and other essentials arrived.

Crews using rescue dogs have scoured about 32 percent of the area, Maui County said in a statement Tuesday. Hawaii Gov. Josh Green asked for patience as authorities were overwhelmed with requests to visit the burned area.

Maui Police Chief John Pelletier renewed an appeal for families with missing relatives to provide DNA samples. So far 41 samples have been submitted, the county release said, and 13 DNA profiles have been obtained from the remains.

The governor warned that many more bodies could be found. The wildfires, some of which have yet to be fully contained, are already the deadliest in the US in more than a century. Their cause was under investigation.

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Asked by Hawaii News Now if children were among the missing, Green said Tuesday, “Tragically, yes…. When the bodies are smaller, we know it’s a child.”

He described some of the sites being searched as “too much to share or see from a human perspective.”

Another complicating factor, Green said, is that thunderstorms with rain and high winds are forecast for the weekend. Officials are considering whether or not to “preemptively shut down for a short period of time, because right now the entire infrastructure is weaker.”

A week after the fires began, some residents were still dealing with intermittent electricity, unreliable cell phone service and uncertainty about where to get help. Some people periodically walked to a seawall, where phone connections were stronger, to make calls. Flying low off the coast, a single-propeller plane used a loudspeaker to broadcast information about where to get water and supplies.

Victoria Martocci, who lost her diving business and a boat, planned to travel to her storage unit in Kahalui from her home in Kahana on Wednesday to hide documents and mementos given to her by a friend whose house burned down. “These are things she grabbed, the only things she could grab, and I want to keep them safe for her,” Martocci said.

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The local power company has already faced criticism for not shutting off power when high winds hit a parched area with a high risk of fire. It is unclear whether the utility’s equipment played any role in igniting the flames.

Hawaiian Electric Co. Inc. president and CEO Shelee Kimura said many factors played into the decision to shut off power, including the impact on people who rely on specialized medical equipment and concerns that an outage in the area of the fire would have knocked out water pumps.

Green has said the flames reached a speed of 1.6 kilometers per minute in one area, fueled by dry grass and driven by strong winds from a passing hurricane.

The fire that swept through century-old Lahaina last week destroyed nearly every building in the town of 13,000 people. That fire has been 85% contained, according to the county. Another fire known as the Upcountry fire was 60 percent contained.

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International

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