A heartbreaking moment unfolded live on air when a Hawaiian broadcaster revealed that he has lost four family members to the devastating Maui wildfires – with at least one other relative still unaccounted for.
Jonathan Masaki Shiroma is a Maui native who now works as a broadcaster for Hawaiian News Now.
He told Live Now Fox that it was a “gut punch” to learn that his loved ones were among the 96 so far killed as they tried to flee the deadly blazes that have ravaged the Hawaiian island over the last week.
“It’s like a gut punch, you hear the words of devastation and then you realise that the home town as a child [where you were] playing in the cane fields and near what was the Pioneer Mill and then hearing that family members lost their lives as they tried to leave the field plains that just engulfed so quickly, and then one still remains missing,” he said.
“It just becomes so personal.”
As a newscaster, Mr Shiroma said that he has been trying to maintain composure while reporting on the tragedy, but that it’s something that has hit close to home.
“As you know, when you’re a newscaster you have to maintain that composure but when you’re saying things on air of your very hometown and seeing people that you know, it’s just heartbreaking,” he said.
“Today the prayers continue for everyone on Maui and in Lahaina specifically as the news does not get better, the unfolding of just how much has been lost continues.”
Despite the horrors that Maui residents are facing, he said that local communities will band together in this time of need.
“One thing that does remain, growing up on Maui we have a saying ‘Maui nō ka ʻoi’ – ‘Maui is the best’. I believe that the spirit of Maui and the spirit of the people of Maui will prevail, will join together to help each other out,” he said.
“I know that our people will bond together to make it through this extremely difficult time.”
Hawaiian broadcaster reveals he has lost four family members to wildfires— (Fox Live Now)
The death toll from the Hawaiian wildfires has now risen to 96, after officials confirmed that another three victims had been found among the ruins on Monday.
The blaze which burned the historic town of Lahaina to the ground is already the deadliest wildfire in US modern history, soaring past the death toll of 85 people killed in the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California.
The death toll is expected to climb even further as hundreds of residents still remain missing, with the search for survivors painstakingly slow.
As of Saturday, crews with cadaver dogs had managed to cover just three per cent of the search area.
Of the victims so far found, officials have been faced with a new, grim challenge of struggling to identify them – as the remains are burned to such an extreme.
Maui County police chief John Pelletier described the state of the remains in chilling detail.
“We pick up remains and they fall apart,” he said on Saturday.
“The remains we’re finding is through a fire that melted metal. We have to do rapid DNA to identify everyone.”
By then, only two victims had been formally identified with officials urging survivors with missing family members to come forward to provide DNA samples to help with the identification process.
Some residents have started to return to Lahaina where the fire burned around 2,170 acres and destroyed historic buildings and homes.
Homes and cars destroyed by the Hawaii wildfires— (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
As Hawaiian locals desperately search for their loved ones and piece together what’s left of their homes, some have claimed that looters are now targeting Lahaina at night, robbing residents and stealing their last worldly possessions.
Matt Robb, co-owner of a Lāhainā bar called The Dirty Monkey, told Business Insider that residents are desperate for local leaders to take control of the emergency response amid a spate of people being robbed at gunpoint.
“There’s some police presence. There’s some small military presence, but at night people are being robbed at gunpoint,” Matt Robb, co-owner of local bar The Dirty Monkey, told Business Insider.
Meanwhile, celebrities and tourists are coming under fire as some are still flocking to the island.
Paris Hilton has been slammed for holidaying in Maui over the weekend while Oprah Winfrey’s camera crew was refused entry at an emergency shelter as she came to hand out supplies.
