2 weeks after Maui fires, number of unaccounted for remains elusive with officials pleading for DNA

LAHAINA, Hawaii – How many children are among the Maui wildfire victims and how many people are still unaccounted for are the most significant questions two weeks after the deadly fires destroyed the town of Lahaina.

Hawaii officials, the FBI Honolulu office and DNA experts provided an update on Tuesday on the search for remains and how they determine the number of missing people after the brush fires.

The brush fires broke out on Aug. 8, fueled by 70 mph winds as Hurricane Dora moved far to the south of the islands, pushing flames at highway speeds. The fires destroyed about 2,200 homes, displacing an estimated 4,500 people. 

Cadaver dogs and search teams have found the remains of 115 people after searching 100% of the single-story residential homes in Lahaina, according to Maui County. Of those, only 22 have been identified. As search teams find remains, they mark GPS coordinates for where the victim was found, said Maui County Police Chief John Pelletier.

A day after Maui Mayor Richard Bissen posted a video saying about 850 remained on the unaccounted-for list, the number again returned to nearly 1,100 people, according to the FBI and Maui police.

Pelletier said soon after the fires, he enlisted the help of the FBI Honolulu office because of the resources needed to search an entire town burned to the ground. 

Pelletier said Maui police plan to release the official list but declined to provide a date or time when that would happen. 

FBI Honolulu Special Agent in Charge Steven Merrill said the FBI has been working to combine the missing person lists from the American Red Cross, FEMA, the Family Assistance Center and the Maui Police Department. Many of these lists do not include all the information needed for a missing person.

“For instance, we have information about a first or last name, but not both. This makes it very difficult for us to identify who that person may be,” Merrill said.

How many children are among the missing is also unknown. The fires broke out during a school day, separating families. Hawaii Gov. Josh Green previously said he expected “many” children to be among the fire victims.

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“I would like to say there is none. I don’t know the answer because we’re not recovering whole bodies,” Pelletier said. “We’re picking up ash. Some of it’s crumbling.”

Merrill said they don’t have a date of birth or information on the missing list to “know whether that person was a minor or an adult or anything.”

The FBI and Maui police are asking people with missing loved ones to call either the FBI Honolulu hotline at 808-566-4300 or the Maui police. People on the mainland can reach out to their local FBI office, which can collect their information and arrange DNA samples to be collected.

Officials need information including the first and last name, their date of birth, what they looked like and any living relatives. 

More than anything, Maui officials are begging the public to come forward and supply DNA to help identify the fire victims. 

Julie French, with ANDE Rapid DNA, said nearly 75% of the remains found have been tested for and generated DNA results. 

“Our plea, to encourage people to come to the Family Assistance Center, is really impactful for our testing because we don’t want to end up in a situation where we’ve generated results from remains that have come in from the disaster, but we don’t have anyone to search against them,” French said, adding multiple samples from a family are the most helpful. 

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Andrew Martin manages the Family Assistance Center at the Hyatt Regency in Ka’anapali and said the process to submit a DNA sample is quick, and the family can provide information about their family member at the center. Martin said the number of family members coming in to provide DNA samples has been “a lot lower than they’ve seen in other disasters.”

French said 104 DNA samples have been submitted in the two weeks since the fires.

Martin pleaded with the public to come in and submit a sample, adding there are no strings attached to submitting DNA.

“It’s not going to be used for any type of or entered into any criminal justice database. It’s not going to be retained by any criminal justice agency,” Martin said. “No one who comes to the Family Assistance Center is going to be asked whether or not they’re a United States citizen. What we want to do, all we want to do is help people and identify their unaccounted for loved ones.”

   

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