The death toll from the fires that nearly razed a town on the island of Maui now stands at 110 dead, authorities in the American archipelago of Hawaii announced on Wednesday, who are carrying out painstaking research and are awaiting an official visit from the president next Monday.
“110 people have been confirmed dead,” Hawaii Governor Josh Green said at a press conference, announcing the discovery of four additional bodies.
This balance sheet could still increase considerably. Because a week after the tragedy, rescuers and sniffer dogs searching the rubble of Lahaina, historic town of Maui, have only inspected 38% of the area, according to authorities.
“This is a very difficult search operation,” said Deanne Criswell, head of the federal agency responsible for responding to natural disasters (Fema).
Forensic pathologists equipped with a mobile morgue arrived as reinforcements on Tuesday. The teams mobilized now include experts who have worked on the September 11 attacks, plane crashes or monster fires in the United States.
However, the task remains difficult to locate and identify the corpses in Lahaina, which had 12,000 inhabitants before the disaster. The true extent of the drama may not be known for several weeks.
The fire was so intense in the former capital of the kingdom of Hawaii that it melted the metal: many homes were reduced to ashes and the bodies found are often unrecognizable.
Only a handful of bodies have been identified so far. Relatives of missing persons are encouraged to give their DNA to facilitate the identification of corpses.
Given the number of tourists present at the time of the disaster, this again represents a considerable challenge.
Authorities will “have to put in place some kind of system” allowing relatives of missing vacationers to go to their “local police station” anywhere in the United States to provide a DNA sample, said Adam Weintraub, an official for the Hawaiian Crisis Management Agency.
Hundreds of people are still missing. Among them, some are gradually located by their relatives as communications are restored on the island, but others will inevitably join the ranks of the victims of the tragedy.
President Joe Biden will visit the archipelago next Monday with his wife Jill, the White House announced on Wednesday. The couple must “meet with rescue teams, survivors as well as official officials” on Monday, August 21, spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre announced in a statement on Wednesday.
“I remain committed to making sure the people of Hawaii have everything they need to recover from this disaster,” the president wrote on X (ex-Twitter).
Joe Biden had quickly declared a state of natural disaster in Hawaii, which made it possible to deploy emergency assistance from the federal state, and spoke several times with the governor of the state, Josh Green.
But he was criticized by the Republican opposition for his response deemed insufficient or even indifferent to these fires. If he had quickly mentioned the disaster at the beginning of a speech last Thursday in Utah, the president did not speak publicly when the balance sheet worsened heavily over the weekend.
In Hawaii, local authorities are also under fire from critics: the warning sirens used in the event of a tsunami have not sounded and the alerts on television, radio and on mobiles have been largely useless because of power cuts. fluent.
Completely taken aback, dozens of Lahaina residents threw themselves into the sea to escape the flames.
An investigation has been opened to examine the management of the crisis and the feeling of abandonment rumbles among some locals.
The electricity supplier Hawaiian Electric is also the subject of a complaint. He is accused of negligence and of not having cut off the current from the start of the fires, which could have increased the risk of fires due to the fall of many electric poles.
“What happened, in my opinion, borders on negligence,” Annelise Cochran, a 30-year-old who had to jump into the water to survive, told AFP.
Fueled by the passage of a hurricane off Hawaii, these fires occurred in the middle of a summer marked by extreme events on the planet, linked to global warming according to experts, including mega forest fires in Canada.
08/17/2023 02:08:47 – Kahului (United States) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
