Two weeks after wildfires began on the Hawaiian island of Maui, hundreds of people are still missing. That made known to local authorities. A list of 388 verified names of whom nothing has been heard since the fires was published on Friday. Meanwhile, the cause of the fires, which has not yet been officially determined, continues to occupy the island. At least 115 people have been killed in the fires in Hawaii, which included the historic coastal town of Lahaina.
The ‘validated list’, compiled by the FBI, only contains people whose full names are known and verified. Shortly after its publication, at least a hundred people reported unharmed, writes the AP news agency.
“The 388 names are a subset of a larger list,” said Steven Merrill, a special agent at the FBI’s Honolulu field office, at a news conference in Maui on Friday. In his own words, he does not want to “lose sight of the fact that we are hundreds of other names” that need more information. The new figures are a lot more modest than the nearly 2,000 people who were reported missing earlier this week. Merill gave no explanation for this discrepancy.
Rumbling with evidence
As authorities try to track down the remaining missing civilians, the circumstances surrounding the fires remain shrouded in question. Earlier, questions arose about the actions of local authorities, partly because the sirens, which are used to warn of natural disasters, were not activated. The head of the local disaster response resigned with immediate effect. Now Hawaiian Electric Company, the state’s main electric company, is also accused of tampering with evidence in the fire investigation. The company was sued earlier this week for negligence for “unforgivably energizing their power lines.”
From court documents, about which CNN Friday writes, it now appears that evidence “may be vital” in determining the cause of the deadly fire in Lahaina may have been compromised. For example, fallen power poles, power lines and other equipment would have been moved. An official cause for the wildfires, in what is by far the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. state history and the deadliest wildfire in the entire U.S. in more than a hundred years, has not yet been disclosed.