The number of people that are not accounted for in the Maui fire fell by half

Lahaina’s Search and Recovery Continues: Joe Biden, the Electric Company, and the Sheriff’s Office are to blame

It’s the electric company’s fault. The county is to blame. It’s Joe Biden’s fault. Everyone’s fault. They want an easy answer,” he says. “The fact of the matter is, I saw it from beginning to end and it moved so fast, like a blowtorch.”

LAHAINA, Hawaii — In the burn zone of Lahaina, the search and recovery effort continues in the wake of the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than 100 years. The work is necessarily painstaking and slow, even as families still missing loved ones remain in anguish, waiting for answers.

Commander Frank Sebastian of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is leading a federal team of more than two dozen pathologists, forensic dentists and coroners who have mobilized here from around the U.S. to help the overwhelmed Maui County coroner’s office.

Source: Lahaina wants closure. Authorities plead for patience

Search and recovery in Maui after a wildfire: The firefighters of Lahaina, the rescue workers, and the search for bodies

Hurricane force winds whipped the flames from tinder-dry brushland on Maui into whole neighborhoods that now infamous day of Aug. 8. When the fire killed so much evidence, it’s a huge challenge to make IDs.

Sebastian says that it’s difficult in this case due to the condition of the remains. When you have burns, there’s destruction of tissue. It becomes a very tedious process to reassemble that.

On Maui, authorities are pleading with the public to be patient as forensics teams like Sebastian’s have been working around the clock now for close to two weeks trying to find bodies in the rubble from the deadly wildfire.

Sgt. Manuel Soco is with a U.S. Army search and extraction team that’s also been working more than fourteen straight days now. Some of them are clearing some debris in front of the K9 units and others are training the dogs to search for bodies.

Soco is grateful that his teams have plenty of mental health support. But it’s still stressful and they’re often in dangerous and precarious situations in a place many of them call home.

Source: Lahaina wants closure. Authorities plead for patience

A New List of Known Victims of the Lahaina Wildfire: Curt Hanthorn, Jeremiah Pelletier, and the Maui Police Chief

We are here to support the people of Lahaina. “The best we can do is help bring closure to them by identifying victims, as many of them as we can.”

While waiting in a long line to pick up his mail for the first time in two weeks, Lahaina resident Curt Hanthorn said that it was no surprise to him. He’s sure that the death toll from the fire will increase as the search for remains continues.

Maui County officials said 386 names were on the list of people who were “unaccounted for” after the Lahaina wildfire.

In another change, the county for the first time published what it calls a “validated list,” sharing the names of people it says have not been accounted for.

“We’re releasing this list of names today because we know that it will help with the investigation,” Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said, even as he acknowledged that publishing the names would likely cause distress.

“We also know that once those names come out, it can and will cause pain for folks whose loved ones are listed,” he added. “We want to make sure that the investigation is thorough and complete, but it’s an difficult thing to do and we want to make sure we do everything we can.”

Some of the names on the list have previously been published, appearing in an online spreadsheet that grew out of the Maui community’s grassroots effort to locate loved ones. Some of the names do not overlap.

The revised number emerged late Thursday, after Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said the FBI was working to “un-duplicate people” who were reported missing. By checking formal names and taking other steps, Green predicted, the number would “decrease very significantly.”

It was complicated by lack of detail in some reports, and the wide variety of lists of people who were not present, Merrill said.

DNA Sampling in the Wake of the Fires: Maui’s 46th Associated Family Assistance Center (Family Assistance Center)

The death toll from the fires that raged through the US this week has stayed the same as the number of people who are missing has changed.

The remains of 46 people were identified by Thursday, according to the Maui Police Department. Families have been located and notified of their loss in 35 of those cases.

Officials have repeatedly urged parents, siblings, and children of people whose whereabouts are unknown to give DNA samples, to help analysts identify remains that have been recovered.

The family assistance center is in a ballroom at the Hyatt Regency in Kaanapali and people on Maui can come there in order to take a sample of their saliva. Relatives who live on other islands or the continental U.S. can call the FBI at (808) 566-4300 or send an email to [email protected] for guidance about providing a sample.