Search teams reach 3 per cent of disaster zone
The death toll from wildfires in Hawaii has risen to at least 93, marking Hawaii’s worst natural disaster since it became a US state in 1959 and also the deadliest US wildfire since 1918. That figure is likely to rise: search teams have so far covered just 3 per cent of the disaster zone as the charred buildings are unstable and sniffer dogs used to find bodies need breaks, Deanne Criswell, from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said yesterday, describing Lahaina’s waterfront, lined with burnt-out cars, to “a scene from an apocalyptic movie”. Many residents said emergency-warning sirens around the island of Maui never sounded; the NYT reports that Lahaina’s water supply failed and an offshore hurricane caused high winds that both fuelled the blaze and made it impossible to use helicopters to pick up water from the ocean.
Photograph Getty