Lahaina, once Hawaii’s royal capital, is now a crematorium.
“We pick up remains and they fall apart,” said Maui County police chief John Pelletier on Saturday, four days after a massive wildfire tore downhill through dry brush and grass and engulfed the island’s western edge.
Close to 100 deaths have been confirmed, making the Lahaina wildfires the deadliest in the US in more than a century.
But just 3% of Lahaina’s charred ruins have been searched so far, stoking fears that the death toll will continue its sharp climb.
“None of us really know the size of it yet,” chief Pelletier warned, growing visibly emotional.
Dozens of survivors shared their stories of escape and loss with the BBC, helping to piece together a more complete picture of the tragedy that unfolded on Tuesday, when fires moving at a mile per minute consumed the town.
One thing seemed to unite their accounts: residents say they had no official warning before they fled for their lives, raising painful questions about the effectiveness of the emergency response and whether more people could have been saved.
On Tuesday morning, Lahaina residents woke up to find their power was out. Phones hadn’t charged, alarm clocks stayed quiet and air conditioners shut down.
For Les Munn, a 42-year-old resident, the outage announced itself in a dropped call to the country’s east coast. He had woken up at 4:00am that day to accommodate the six-hour time difference. Mid-conversation, the connection was cut.
But the outage alone wasn’t especially concerning, Munn said.
Source: bbc.com
