On Maui, the death toll from the devastating fires has risen to 89. According to the media, it is the deadliest wildfire in recent US history. Emergency supplies are slow.
The number of dead after the devastating bush and forest fires on the island of Maui in the US state of Hawaii has risen to 89. According to media reports, the state governor, Josh Green, announced this at a press conference. According to Green, these are the deadliest bushfires in the United States in more than 100 years.
Most recently, the authorities had given the number of dead as 80. Green had previously announced that he expected more fatalities. It could take up to a week for the rescue workers to work their way through the rubble and ash in all affected locations.
Green: Emergency supplies are slow
The US disaster protection agency FEMA said that around a dozen federal agencies are busy with relief measures for the fire victims. 150 FEMA employees, including search and rescue teams, are already on Maui – more are on the way.
The rescue work is made even more difficult by the fact that the city of Lahaina in the north and south can only be reached via a large access road. Gov. Green acknowledged that emergency supplies are getting off to a slow start because it is difficult to get supplies to Maui from other islands. The situation is unprecedentedly devastating.
Around 2,200 buildings in the district were damaged or destroyed by the fire, according to updated figures from the Pacific Disaster Center and FEMA. Initial estimates are for around 5.5 billion US dollars – the equivalent of 5.0 billion euros – for the reconstruction there.
criticism of disaster management
Not only the emergency supply on Maui causes problems – recently there has also been increasing criticism that no warning sirens should have been used on Maui at the beginning.
In the city of Lahaina, which had around 13,000 inhabitants before the accident, there had also been complaints that an evacuation might have been ordered too late – according to the “New York Times” on Facebook, there were reports from the authorities on Thursday that the fires are under control. Fire chief Bradford Ventura later said at a press conference that the fires had spread surprisingly quickly and that it had previously been “almost impossible” to order evacuations quickly enough.
Governor Green told CNN that he had ordered an investigation into the authorities’ initially slow response.
Fires broke out on Tuesday
In addition to the fires in western Maui, fires broke out in other regions of the island and on the neighboring island of Hawaii at the beginning of the week, which had spread quickly due to strong winds at speeds of up to 130 kilometers per hour. With an area of around 1,900 square kilometers, the Hawaiian island is about half the size of the Spanish holiday island of Mallorca.