The Hawaii wildfires, which are already the deadliest in more than a hundred years in the United States, could see their death toll worsen in the coming hours, heightening criticism over the authorities’ handling of the tragedy. These fires of unusual intensity and spread caused the death of at least 96 people. A figure that should inevitably increase, given that only a small portion of the ravaged area has been explored by rescuers so far.
These fires of exceptional intensity and speed killed 96 people in Maui, according to a provisional report Sunday evening, leaving corpses difficult to identify. “None of us know the full extent yet” of the disaster, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said. The flames reduced the seaside town of Lahaina to ashes, swallowing houses, cars, hotels or businesses. Their heat was so strong that the bodies found are difficult to identify, explained John Pelletier. So far, only two have been able to.
The fire “even melted the metal,” the police chief said, calling on relatives of missing persons to submit to DNA testing to help identify the victims. Sniffer dogs searching for missing people, who could number in the hundreds, still have a huge area to scour, Pelletier added.
“We’re going as fast as we can. But just so you know, 3% is what the dogs searched,” he pointed out. The circumstances of these dazzling fires, the cause of which is not yet known, remain unclear. In any case, they took the inhabitants by surprise, which many blame the authorities for.
“You want to know when we knew there was a fire?” When he arrived in front of the house,” Vilma Reed complained to AFP. “The mountain was burning behind our house and we were told damn it! Like many residents, she received no alerts or evacuation orders, due to a series of anomalies. The powerful sirens, used in particular for tsunamis, remained silent. Nobody knows if it was a technical failure or a decision of the operators.
Official television and radio alerts were out of reach for residents without electricity. Finally, the telephones, precious relays of information for the authorities in these crises, could not help, for lack of a network. According to residents, the warning usually sent in the event of a weather danger or an abduction alert did not sound on their devices.
An investigation has been opened by the Attorney General into the circumstances of the fire, including the decisions taken by the authorities. Hawaii Congresswoman Jill Tokuda has previously acknowledged that authorities had “underestimated the dangerousness and speed of the fire”.
Mazie Hirono, a Democratic senator from the archipelago, told CNN that she does not want to “try to find excuses for this tragedy”.
“No one saw it coming. That’s it,” said police chief John Pelletier. Many factors contributed to the extreme dangerousness of these fires, for example the presence of plants that burn very easily, a hurricane in the southwest of the island of Maui which fed very violent winds, or an abnormally dry winter. Faced with the extent of the damage, President Joe Biden said Sunday he was considering traveling to Hawaii, where several smaller fires are still burning.
The local population was already trying to think about the future on Saturday and wanted to recover bits of their lives, spared by the flames.
Some residents have waited for hours hoping to gain access to the sites of their homes to search for missing pets or loved ones. But Maui police have warned anyone who enters the disaster area could face a fine, and even jail time. The public will not be allowed into Lahaina while risk assessments and searches are ongoing, according to police.
Some 2,207 buildings, mostly residential, were destroyed or damaged, according to the federal agency responsible for responding to natural disasters (Fema). For the Lahaina fire alone, the cost of reconstruction is estimated at $5.52 billion.
Rebuilding will likely take “years,” Mazie Hirono warned. This disaster comes amid a summer marked by a series of extreme weather events across the planet, including an intense heat wave in the southern United States and mega wildfires in Canada, phenomena linked to global warming according to experts.
