Residents of Maui awoke Thursday and began surveying the devastation caused by the island’s worst wildfires, a series of fast-moving blazes that killed at least 53 people and turned the historic town of Lahaina into a smoking ruin.
The Maui wildfires, which haven’t been fully contained, are the deadliest to occur in the United States since 2018, when 85 people died in northern California’s Camp Fire, the most destructive in the state’s history.
The death toll and damage from the fires in Hawaii were unimaginable, officials said. Hawaii Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke (D) said Lahaina had been “decimated” and “forever changed.” The fires are testing Maui residents “like never before,” Mayor Richard Bissen said. “We are grieving with each other during this inconsolable time.”
Rescue teams, including members of the Hawaii National Guard, are continuing to search for victims, and officials warned that the death toll was likely to rise. It jumped from 36 to 53 on Thursday.
“What we’ve seen today has been catastrophic” and likely the “worst natural disaster” in the history of Hawaii, Gov. Josh Green (D) said at a news conference Thursday. “We will continue to see loss of life.”
The fires forced large-scale evacuations, displaced hundreds of families and left a swath of the island without power or cellphone service. As people frantically searched for missing relatives, evacuation centers posted handwritten lists of those who had made it to safety. It will take billions of dollars to rebuild everything that the blazes erased, Green said.
Griffin Gibson, a college student, grew up in Lahaina and watched from a nearby hillside as the fire swept through his hometown. On Wednesday evening, he biked down to the seafront to see what was left. It was a route he had taken thousands of times before, but he had no idea where he was.
