President Joe Biden will travel to Hawaii next week to meet with survivors and rescuers who are still looking for victims of the fires that devastated the archipelago and leave more than a hundred dead.
(Read also: Tension between tourists and residents in Hawaii is fueled by devastating fires)
The fire, which destroyed the historic town of Lahaina, Maui, is the deadliest in the United States in more than a century. and Hawaii Gov. Josh Green has repeatedly said the death toll could even double.
Maui County authorities reported 106 fatalities Tuesday night; including two Mexicans, according to the Mexican Foreign Ministry.
To date, only a quarter of the disaster area in Lahaina, on the west coast of the island of Maui, it has been tracked by dogs trained in body search tasks, according to Green.
(Read also: The death toll from the fires in Maui, Hawaii rises to 80)
Some refrigerated containers were installed on the island as a provisional morgue, in addition to personnel from the Ministry of Health, to expedite the complicated process of identifying the victims, an AFP journalist confirmed.
Biden and his wife Jill will meet in Maui on Monday “with first responders, survivors, and federal, state and local officials,” the White House said in a statement. “I remain committed to giving all the people of Hawaii need as they recover from this disaster,” the president said on X, formerly Twitter.
difficult identification
The process to identify the victims is progressing slowly. Authorities collected DNA samples from 41 people whose relatives disappeared in the tragedy. Only five of the deceased have been identified.
Maui County officials released two of his names after notifying those close to him of his death.. Hundreds of people are still reported missing, although this number is dwindling as communications are restored on the island.
In Lahaina, which had a population of 12,000 before the tragedy, more than 2,000 buildings were destroyed and many homes flattened. President Biden signed the natural disaster declaration in order to finance emergency equipment and reconstruction. The management of the crisis has been harshly criticized and many inhabitants have said they feel abandoned by the authorities.
clinging to the boardwalk
“What happened, in my opinion, borders on negligence (…) I’m only here because I saved myself,” Annelise Cochran, a 30-year-old woman who survived the flames by jumping into the sea, told AFP.
When she found herself surrounded by flames on the Lahaina boardwalk, this experienced swimmer didn’t think twice and, like other people, saw that jumping into the sea was her only option.
She spent between five and eight hours in the water, clinging to the rock wall that borders the end of the boardwalk, before she could be rescued. More than a week after the devastating fire, Maui authorities are trying to shelter the survivors, who lost almost everything.
Some 2,000 accommodations (hotel rooms, Airbnb establishments or private individuals) are freely accessible to residents for at least 36 weeks. But, the controversies and criticisms about the management of the authorities in the face of this type of catastrophe do not stop growing. Many point out that some fire crews were unable to act quickly because fire hydrants were dry or at very low flow.
Electricity provider Hawaiian Electric is also the subject of a complaint for failing to turn off the power, despite the ceasing of the fire and strong winds from a hurricane passing southwest of Maui. These fires occur in the middle of a summer marked by extreme events around the world, such as the unprecedented fires in Canada, all of them related to climate change according to experts.
AFP
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