UPDATE: 10:15 p.m.

Maui County reported this evening the death toll is now 93 with two of them identified.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE

The confirmed death toll from the fire that obliterated Lahaina rose by nine today to 89, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century, and Gov. Josh Green said that number will “continue to rise.”

“We want to brace people for that,” Green said at an afternoon news conference on Maui.

To stress the point, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said only 3% of the burned area of Lahaina has been searched. He asked for patience and stressed that it was going to take time to comb through the rubble of thousands of burned structures and get the full accounting of fatalities.

Pelletier said two of the 89 victims have been identified so far, adding that identifying the dead is extremely challenging because “we pick up the remains and they fall apart.” He did not release the names of the two who had been identified.

“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. Every one of these 89 are John and Jane Does,” he said. “We know we’ve got to go quick, but we’ve got to do it right.”

He said today was the first day cadaver-sniffing dogs were used and another 12 more are on the way to Maui.

Officials said the recovered remains so far were mostly from outside of the building rubble, and mainly in burned-out cars.

U.S. Fire Administrator Lori Moore-Merrell said the investigation into the fire, and how rapidly it spread, was ongoing.

“It was a very fast-moving fire, it was a low-to-the-ground fire, it was grass-fed by all evidence that we could observe today,” she said. “It outpaced anything the firefighters could have done in the early hours. … The unfortunate part about this is that since 2017 the U.S. has experienced the top 10 wildfires in our nation. … This fire has now become the deadliest fire in the last 10 years.”

The new death toll surpassed the number of fatalities from the 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California, which left 85 dead and destroyed the town of Paradise. A century earlier, the 1918 Cloquet Fire broke out in drought-stricken northern Minnesota and raced through a number of rural communities, destroying thousands of homes and killing hundreds.

Green said the Maui fires “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.”

An influx of members of the National Guard and active-duty U.S. military are set to assist in the government’s relief efforts.

Brig. Gen. Steve Logan, commander of Hawaii National Guard, this morning was appointed by Green as dual-status commander, meaning he has control over both National Guard troops and active-duty members of the U.S. military responding to the Lahaina fire.

Logan said at the news conference that there is “a vast array of active-duty forces that are ready to flow into the County of Maui.”

Normally, the National Guard and active-duty members of the military operate under separate chains of command.

Dual-status commanders were established shortly after Hurricane Katrina to efficiently combine the efforts of both forces.

Logan said that his forces will be used to support Maui Mayor Richar Bissen, Jr. and his administration.

“Let me be clear about this, we are here in a support role. We’re here to support Mayor Bissen, his staff, and the rest of the county agencies, not to take charge, and not to take control,” he said.

——

This livestream video has ended. Watch a replay at the top of the page.

——