Hawaii Fire Death Toll Reaches 93, Becoming Deadliest US Wildfire in More Than 100 Years

The death toll in the wildfires in Maui, Hawaii has risen to 93, making the wildfires the deadliest in the U.S. in more than 100 years.

The latest number of fatalities confirmed in the wildfires — which were first reported on Aug. 8 and have devastated the areas off Lahaina and Kula in Maui — rose to 93 on Sunday, with only two people identified, Maui County confirmed in an update on Saturday. According to a post on the Maui County Facebook page, police have not release the names of those identified, “pending notification of their families.”

According to data from the National Fire Protection Association, the death toll from the Maui fires has now overtaken that of the deadly wildfire in northern California in 2018, known as the Camp Fire, which resulted in 85 deaths. The number of fatalities in the current fires in Hawaii has also exceeded those from the Great Fire of 1910, a forest fire that raged across Idaho and Montana and left 87 dead.

The last major wildfire in the US with a higher number of fatalities was the Thumb Fire in Michigan’s lower peninsula more than 140 years ago. The 1881 fire claimed 282 lives, according to National Fire Protection Association data, which detailed deaths from US wildfires on record since 1871.

The Maui fires are the deadliest in the U.S. in 100 years.

PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty

Maui County confirmed that while firefighting crews continue to work on extinguishing flare-ups in the Lahaina and Upcountry Maui fires, as of Saturday they have been able to contain the Pulehu/Kīhei fire.

As the death toll continues to rise, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier — in a press conference on Saturday shared by The Washington Post — urged Maui residents to take DNA tests “if you’ve got missing family members” in effort to find and identify more residents of the island. “We need to identify your loved ones,” he said.

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Hawaii Gov. Josh Green also spoke during the press conference, and stated that so far, 1418 people have received shelter. He also said that evacuation is currently a top priority. Gov. Green noted the “thousands and thousands” of pounds food that had been donated to the area from the state and around the country.Data on a screen behind Gov. Green during the press conference detailed that 40,000 people had been flown out of Maui since August 9 as he said that “almost 15,000 passengers per day were flown out. It makes our recovery work quite a lot easier and that’s why people have left most of that region.” Gov. Green added that there were still people staying at the airport making decisions on when they were ready to depart Maui.“A lot of people are stunned, they’re traumatized. They’re traumatized by what they see our people are going through,” he continued.

Gov. Green also spoke about travel to the area during the press conference, warning those trying to travel into the zones where the fires have occurred of the health consequences. 

“We have to go with caution. There are heavy metals there, there are toxic states where the houses and businesses have come down,” he said. “The recommendations are to avoid those structures, because they could fall on people, and we’ve lost too much life already. There are propane tanks there, there’s really a lot of hazards.” 

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The death poll is expected to continue.

PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty

“This is the largest natural disaster we’ve ever experienced,” Gov. Green said at the end of his announcement at the Saturday press conference. “It’s going to also be a natural disaster that’s going to take an incredible amount of time to recover from.” He added that “it’s going to be, in the short term, heart breaking. In the long term, people are going to need mental health care services, in the very long term, we will rebuild together.”

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The latest death toll comes after a preliminary estimate by CoreLogic, which publishes reports on property data, placed the total cost of damages from the Maui wildfires at an estimated $1.3 billion, The estimate, Core Logic said, is based on a total of 3,088 residential properties that are located in the Lahaina, Pulehu and Pukalani areas.

CoreLogic said that Lahaina, an area which has an estimated 2,808 residential properties, would likely cost over $1.2 billion to reconstruct.

On Friday, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra declared a public health emergency for the state of Hawaii, while a day prior President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration for the state of Hawaii, which allowed federal funding to become available for people affected in Maui County. The number of fatalities is expected to rise as the search for missing residents continues.  

“We are seeing loss of life,” Gov. Green said during a earlier news conference on Thursday and described the fires as the “greatest emergency we’ve seen in decades.”

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education