Recovery crews in Hawaii are likely to find between 10-20 more victims per day, the state’s governor has said – meaning the toll from the deadliest US wildfire in a century is expected to rise sharply.
At least 96 people are already confirmed to have died, but Governor Josh Green said emergency responders with cadaver dogs will need more than a week to work their way through hundreds of homes and burned-out vehicles in hard-hit Lahaina.
“There are more fatalities that will come,” he told CBS in an interview aired on Monday.
He added: “They will find 10-20 people per day probably until they finish. And it’s probably going to take 10 days. It’s impossible to guess, really.”
The death toll made the blaze Hawaii’s worst natural disaster, surpassing a tsunami that killed 61 people in 1960, a year after Hawaii became a US state.
It was also the largest number of deaths from a US wildfire since 1918, when 453 people died in the Cloquet fire in Minnesota and Wisconsin, according to data from the National Fire Protection Association.
The historic coastal town of Lahaina on the island of Maui was almost destroyed by the fast-moving inferno last week, with survivors saying there had been no warnings.
With some cell phone communications now restored, residents have been able to connect with family and friends, and the number of people still missing has been reduced from more than 2,000 to around 1,300, said Green.
“Our hearts will break beyond repair, perhaps, if that means that many more dead. None of us think that, but we are prepared for many tragic stories,” he said.
The town, which served as the Hawaiian kingdom’s capital in the early 19th century, was home to around 12,000 residents.
More than 2,200 buildings were damaged or destroyed as the fire tore through Lahaina, according to official estimates, wreaking $5.5bn in damage and leaving thousands homeless.
Many of the survivors took to Sunday church services, including Akanesi Vaa, 38, who said her family got stuck in traffic while trying to escape the flames.
Vaa, her husband and her children aged 15, 13 and nine fled on foot and jumped a fence to safety.
Along the way, an elderly woman pleading for help handed her a baby to care for. The woman and her husband also made it over the fence.
“I think many of us needed to hear today’s message,” Vaa said after attending church at King’s Cathedral in Kahului. “All these ashes are going to turn into beauty. I know Lahaina will come back ten times stronger.”
Scott Landis, pastor at Keawal’i Church, said an unusually large crowd of 100 showed, nearly double what he would have expected on a typical Sunday in August.
“They were really listening. You could tell people were here, looking for a word of hope,” the preacher added.
Governor Green has vowed to investigate the response to the blaze and the emergency notification systems after some residents questioned whether more could have been done to warn them.
Some witnesses said they had little warning, describing their terror as the blaze destroyed the town around them in what seemed like minutes. Others dove into the Pacific Ocean to escape.
Sirens stationed around the island, intended to warn of impending natural disasters, never sounded, and widespread power and cellular outages hampered other forms of alerts.
“We’ll know soon whether or not they did enough to get those sirens going,” Green told MSNBC.