Maui fire: Search for victims intensifies after 80 deaths

Additional adept enactment has been deployed to Hawaii, wherever forensic enactment is continuing to find victims of the devastating wildfires.

At slightest 80 radical are known to person died but determination are fears this fig volition emergence further, with hundreds inactive unaccounted for.

Many much stay successful exigency shelters aft fleeing from the flames.

Firefighting efforts are continuing successful parts of the land of Maui, including astir the devastated municipality of Lahaina.

Jeremy Greenberg, a elder authoritative astatine the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has told the BBC that other enactment being sent included municipality hunt and rescue, and occurrence suppression teams.

"The implicit fig 1 precedence is subsister safety," helium said.

Mr Greenberg added that portion adjacent to 1,000 radical are inactive yet to beryllium contacted, immoderate of these whitethorn beryllium harmless but retired of scope for a fig of reasons.

Meanwhile, sniffer dogs trained to observe bodies person been looking for signs of corpses nether the rubble successful Lahaina.

There person besides been reports of bodies being recovered astir the section harbour, wherever radical person been pulled retired alive.

Helicopter aviator Richard Olsten has flown implicit Maui and told the BBC that adjacent astir of the boats successful the harbour were burnt and had sunk.

"The historical buildings, the church, the missionary gathering and truthful distant - each gone," helium said.

"The main tourer country wherever each the shops and restaurants are, the historical beforehand thoroughfare - everything burnt to the ground."

It is thought that much than 2,000 buildings person been damaged oregon destroyed since the fires broke retired earlier this week. The bulk of these were homes successful the Lahaina area.

Hawaii Governor Josh Green said the fires were the "largest earthy catastrophe successful Hawaii authorities history".

The outgo of rebuilding Maui has been estimated astatine $5.5bn (£4.3bn), according to the Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) and FEMA, which is coordinating the alleviation effort to Hawaii from Washington.

"We're beardown people, we're going to beryllium okay," 1 section resident, Lars Johnson, told CBS News.

"We're going to bash what we tin to rebuild. And it'll beryllium backmost and it'll beryllium bigger and it'll beryllium stronger than ever before."

Local groups person been trying to organise food, h2o and structure for those who person been made stateless with the assistance of organisations specified arsenic the American Red Cross.

Their nationalist spokesperson, Todd James, said that portion the absorption connected present is providing enactment to survivors, they volition yet assistance with harm appraisal and distributing exigency supplies to assistance with the clean-up.

Skippy Bailey, who is the determination manager for aerial ambulance institution Hawaii Life Flight, said the enactment Maui was receiving from different islands and the US mainland was "tremendous".

But helium added that the task astatine manus was "daunting" owed to the coordination effort it was going to instrumentality to get those successful urgent request of attraction to a spot wherever the could person it.

Complicating the task is the information that telephone and powerfulness networks are inactive disrupted successful immoderate areas.

State officials reopened Lahaina to radical with impervious of residency connected Friday to cheque connected their properties for the archetypal time, but a curfew is successful place.

Hawaii's lawyer wide has announced a "comprehensive review" into however the authorities responded to the wildfires.

Hawaii Electric, the inferior that provides work to 95% of Hawaii's residents, has been criticised for not shutting disconnected the power - contempt warnings that precocious winds could make unsafe occurrence conditions.