Maui Wildfires Leave 67 People Dead: It’s a ‘War Zone’

The death toll from the Maui wildfires climbed to 67 as recovery efforts continue across the island in what officials called the worst natural disaster in Hawaii’s history.

Disrupted phone and internet service made it difficult to determine how many people were missing, and officials said they expected the death toll to rise. The blazes destroyed much of Lahaina, the historic former capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and left residents and tourists stranded throughout the island.

Residents and visitors forced to evacuate during the disaster were told they could return to Lahaina on Friday at noon local time, Maui County said. There will be a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew in some areas.

By 10:30 a.m., a long line of traffic had formed on the Honoapi’ilani Highway, one of the routes back to Lahaina. On another route, local police formed a checkpoint to ensure only residents and visitors with hotel reservations were allowed back to the area.

Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said cadaver dogs were searching on Friday for people killed in the fire. A nine-member search-and-rescue team arrived to assist crews on the ground. The names of the missing were highlighted on a list of local residents posted on a bulletin board outside a shelter.

Lahaina was unrecognizable, Bissen said in an interview with ABC News. Buildings, palm trees and cars were quickly engulfed in flames earlier this week, as wind-whipped walls of fire and smoke spread. By Thursday, there was little more than smoldering rubble where surf shops, restaurants and homes once stood in the town of 12,000.

“The closest thing I can compare it to is perhaps a war zone or a bomb went off,” Bissen said. “Cars in the street, doors open, melted to the ground. Most structures no longer exist.”

At the Maalaea Harbor, approximately 15 miles from Lahaina, cars and trucks waited in line to drop off supplies for the town. One small boat brought supplies to Lahaina at around 9 a.m., and a larger tour boat ferried items such as water, bedding and dog food about an hour later.

The Lahaina fire is one of four that have scorched Maui this week. None of the fires were fully contained by late Thursday. Officials haven’t determined what started the fires.

Firefighters were working to put out the fires and extinguish new flare-ups. The National Weather Service in Honolulu forecast a gradual decrease in winds through Friday.

High winds and drought helped fuel the blazes, according to the National Weather Service. Western Maui has experienced severe drought from a lack of rain, making the region ripe for wildfire. Once the fires started, winds from Hurricane Dora, located nearly 800 miles southwest of Honolulu, fanned flames on the island. 

The topography of Maui was another factor. Winds coming off the ocean were pinned between a layer of warm air in the atmosphere and the ground, causing the winds to speed up, spreading flames quickly. 

A brush fire spread to the first neighborhood in Lahaina so rapidly that Maui’s Emergency Management Agency couldn’t send emergency alerts before it arrived, officials said.

Tourists were told to shelter in place at their hotels, which aren’t near the fires, Bissen said Thursday. Many tried to flee and created bottlenecks in the roads, making it difficult for emergency crews to travel.

The shelter at a Maui high school was crowded overnight on Thursday, and some people slept in cars in the school’s parking lot. Residents set up a kitchen there Thursday evening and made dinner for anyone who needed a meal.

Thousands of people have left the island over the past two days. Nearly 15,000 people flew out of Maui on Thursday, according to Maui County. State officials have discouraged visitors from coming to the island for nonessential travel to spare resources for displaced residents and recovery efforts.

Lahaina is on the National Register of Historic Places and holds an important place in Hawaiian history.

“It’s not right to call it just a tourist town; it’s a Hawaiian town,” says David Aiona Chang, a professor of history and American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota who is a Native Hawaiian.

Front Street, home to dozens of restaurants and businesses, is also home to a banyan tree that stands more than 60 feet tall. The tree was charred in the fires, according to the town’s website, and much of Front Street burned.

“It will shock you how much damage there is. The way things burned to their base: cars, trucks, buildings. There’s no way anyone could stay in that space or be in that space,” Gov. Josh Green said of Lahaina. “All of the infrastructure is gone.”

One of the shelters that opened in Lahaina closed because it was too close to one of the fires, Green said.

The town was a center of the whaling industry in the mid-1800s. It was also home to a printing press that published the first printed documents in the Hawaiian language, Chang said.

Missionaries arrived in Lahaina in the 1820s and built sites now considered historic, such as the Baldwin Home, thought to be the oldest house on Maui. The former mission was most recently headquarters for the Lahaina Restoration Foundation, which maintains landmarks and historic structures.

The Baldwin Home, like many buildings in the area, had a wooden roof, said Theo Morrison, the foundation’s executive director. The roof burned, and the entire building was likely gutted, Morrison said. Lahaina’s business district was decimated.

“We’re just losing the essence of the community,” she said.  

Green said around 1,000 structures had been destroyed. He estimated it would cost billions of dollars to rebuild over several years. President Biden declared a major disaster in the state. Vice President Kamala Harris said she and Biden were monitoring the crisis closely.

The blazes disrupted cellphone and landline service for much of the island. About 11,000 homes and businesses remained without power across Hawaii on Friday morning, according to PowerOutage.us. Most outages are in West Maui, according to Hawaiian Electric.

Hawaiian Electric said it was assessing damage and would begin restoration efforts once areas were safe and accessible. It said West Maui customers without power should prepare for outages that could last several weeks.

—Jennifer Calfas, Suryatapa Bhattacharya and Ethan M. Steinberg contributed to this article.

Write to Joseph De Avila at [email protected], Alicia A. Caldwell at [email protected] and Allison Pohle at [email protected]