Hawaii’s governor, Josh Green, has warned residents to prepare for “a lot more loss of life”, as officials ask for DNA submissions and fingerprints from survivors to help identify relatives who were killed by the Maui wildfires, as huge numbers are still missing.
Green urged Hawaiians to brace for a higher death toll from the destruction on the second largest island in the Hawaiian chain, as police still work to find those unaccounted for.
“We do expect to see a lot more loss of life,” Green said during an interview with KITV, an ABC affiliate, late on Tuesday.
“It’s going to be tragic. I want to brace everyone for that,” he said.
At least 115 people are currently officially known to have died as a result of the Maui wildfires, but about 1,100 people are still unaccounted for.
The police chief, John Pelletier, said on Tuesday that his team faced difficulties in coming up with a solid list of the missing. In some cases people only provided partial names, and in other cases names might be duplicated. There was “no secrecy, no hiding things”, he added.
“We want to get a verified list. The 1,100 names right now, we know that there’s a margin of that, that some of them have first names only and there’s no contact number. So there was a, ‘John’s missing,’ and when we try to call back who said that, no one is answering,” he said. “And so we’re trying to scrub this to make it as accurate as we can.”
Officials announced that every structure damaged by the fire will be searched for remains as part of Hawaii’s larger recovery efforts.
All single-story homes have been searched, authorities confirmed. Officials will now move on to searching multi-level properties and commercial buildings, authorities said in a Monday update.
But authorities are facing a challenge of attempting to confirm the statuses of people who are unaccounted for, including how many people perished and how many made it to safety but have not checked in.
Search-and-rescue authorities have asked residents to give their fingerprints and DNA to identify relatives.
As of Wednesday, only 104 DNA samples had been submitted by families.
Maui’s prosecuting attorney, Andrew Martin, said that the number of family members coming in to provide DNA samples was “a lot lower” than in other major disasters around the country, though it was not immediately clear why.
“That’s our concern, that’s why I’m here today, that’s why I’m asking for this help,” he said.
Pelletier also urged people to provide DNA and file a police report with as much information as possible if they have relatives unaccounted for.
“If you feel you’ve got a family member that’s unaccounted for, give the DNA,” he said. “Do the report. Let’s figure this out. A name with no callback doesn’t help anybody.”
The Associated Press contributed reporting
