Maui Police Chief John Pelletier today asked for residents’ patience in re-entering devastated Lahaina following the massive wildfire that killed at least 53 people so that authorities could respectfully search for and remove even more fatalities.

“Understand this: Lahaina Town is hallowed sacred ground right now because our iwi are in that ground,” Pelletier said at a Thursday news conference on Maui. “We have to get them out. We will get them out as as fast as we can. But I need your patience while we do this.”

Asked about specifics on which parts of Lahaina were spared, Maui Mayor Richard Bissen, Jr. said “all of it” was gone.

Pressed by reporters for exact streets, along with the current number of fatalities, Pelletier later returned to the podium in the Maui County building and insisted that the current number remains at 53.

“We’re going to take our time and do it right,” he said. “When the mayor said it’s gone, it’s all gone. It’s gone.”

Pelletier later acknowledged that the number of fatalities is likely to increase.

“It is rising,” he said. “I do not know what the final answer is going to be. … The amount of loss is incredible.”

Before the news conference, Gov. Josh Green toured Front Street and told CNN by satellite phone — power, water, cell phone and landline services have yet to be restored — that he expects the death toll to eventually “significantly exceed” the 61 deaths from the 1960 tsunami that struck the islands.

Green also said the estimate of buildings destroyed on Maui is “upwards of 1,700,” sharply higher than the initial estimate Wednesday of 271. He said that about 11,000 people in West Maui remain without power.

He described what he was seeing in Lahaina as “total devastation,” estimating that about 80% of the town was destroyed, with hundreds of families displaced. He added that the damage to property will be in the “billions of dollars.”