A raging wildfire that swept through a picturesque town on the Hawaiian island of Maui this week has killed at least 93 people, authorities say, making it the deadliest US wildfire of the past century.
The new death toll on Saturday (Sunday AEST) came as federal emergency workers with axes and cadaver dogs picked through the aftermath of the blaze, marking the ruins of homes with a bright orange X for an initial search and HR when they found human remains.
Dogs worked the rubble, and their occasional bark — used to alert their handlers to a possible corpse — echoed over the hot and colourless landscape.
The inferno that swept through the centuries-old town of Lahaina on Maui’s west coast four days earlier torched hundreds of homes and turned a lush, tropical area into a moonscape of ash.
The state’s governor predicted more bodies will be found.
“It’s going to rise,” Governor Josh Green remarked on Saturday as he toured the devastation on historic Front Street.
“It will certainly be the worst natural disaster that Hawaii ever faced. … We can only wait and support those who are living. Our focus now is to reunite people when we can and get them housing and get them health care, and then turn to rebuilding.”
Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said two of the 93 victims have been identified so far, adding that identifying the dead is extremely challenging because “we pick up the remains and they fall apart”.
“We’ve got an area that we have to contain that is at least 5 square miles (13 square kilometres), and it is full of our loved ones,” he said, noting that the number of dead is likely to grow and “none of us really know the size of it yet.”
He said crews with cadaver dogs had covered just 3 per cent of the search area.
“When we find our family and our friends, the remains that we’re finding is through a fire that melted metal. We have to do rapid DNA to identify them … ,” he said.
“We know we’ve got to go quick, but we’ve got to do it right.”