The death toll from a wildfire that killed at least 55 people on Hawaii's Maui island is expected to rise as search teams comb through the charred ruins of a historic resort town for more victims.
Key points:
- Cadaver dogs from California and Washington state will assist in recovering human remains from the ruins
- The fire was reportedly 80 per cent contained as of Thursday evening local time
- Many survivors say they only realised they were in danger when they saw flames or heard explosions nearby
Meanwhile, questions remain about whether a siren system ever sounded or if residents received any warning at all.
The inferno, which erupted on Tuesday, reduced the town of Lahaina to piles of smouldering debris.
It torched 1,000 buildings in what officials say is already the worst natural disaster in the state's history.
Thousands of people have been left both homeless and jobless.
"Everything is gone. Completely gone," said Brittany Gymreck, the general manager of the high-end Lahaina Grill restaurant, which is among the many historic establishments wiped out in the blaze.
Her staff are among those who have lost both their homes and their livelihoods.
Aid packages have been promised by US President Joe Biden, and Ms Gymreck is now trying to help secure some for her workers.
She lives on the eastern side of the island, but her staff are sleeping at a huge shelter in Wailuku.
"We're just regrouping to file some paperwork and try to get some relief for our friends and start to try to figure out what's next," she said.
Churches are sheltering and feeding hundreds of people.
"We're grieving. We're saddened. We feel for the entire island," said Pastor Shannon Marocco, from King's Cathedral Maui.
"We're also waiting to hear from some of our families."
The grim task ahead
Cadaver dogs from California and Washington state were expected to arrive on Friday local time to help with recovering human remains from the ruins, as firefighters worked to extinguish hot spots and smaller fires.
The fire was 80 per cent contained as of Thursday evening local time, officials said.
"Understand this: Lahaina Town is hallowed, sacred ground right now," Maui police chief John Pelletier said, referring to humans remains that have yet to be recovered.
"We have to get them out."
In addition to searching for the missing, officials were drafting a plan to house the newly homeless in hotels and tourist rental properties.
The island currently has four shelters in operation for the displaced.
Authorities also were dealing with widespread power and water issues across the community.
Witnesses to the conflagration that hit Lahaina spoke of their terror when, without warning, the blaze consumed a town in what seemed to many of them to be a matter of minutes.
Some escaped the racing flames by jumping into the Pacific Ocean.
'An impossible situation'
Hawaii boasts what the state describes as the largest integrated outdoor all-hazard public safety warning system in the world, with about 400 sirens positioned across the island chain to alert people to various natural disasters and other threats.
Maui County mayor Richard Bissen told NBC's Today show that he did not know whether the sirens went off but said the fire moved extraordinarily quickly due to powerful gusts from a hurricane passing well south of the Hawaiian archipelago.
"I think this was an impossible situation," he said.
Many survivors said in interviews on Thursday that they didn't hear any sirens or receive a warning that gave them enough time to prepare and only realised they were in danger when they saw flames or heard explosions nearby.
Hawaii Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Adam Weintraub told the Associated Press that the department's records did not show that Maui's warning sirens were triggered on Tuesday, when the Lahaina fire began.
Instead, the county used emergency alerts sent to mobile phones, televisions and radio stations, Mr Weintraub said.
It is not clear if those alerts were sent before outages cut off most communication to Lahaina.
Maui Fire Department chief Brad Ventura said the fire moved so quickly from brush to neighbourhoods that it was impossible to get messages to the emergency management agencies responsible for alerts.
"What we experienced was such a fast-moving fire through the … initial neighbourhood that caught fire they were basically self-evacuating with fairly little notice," Mr Ventura said.
Thousands of tourists and locals were evacuated from the western side of Maui, which has a year-round population of about 166,000, some taking shelter on the island and others on the neighbouring island of Oahu.
Tourists camped out in the Kahului Airport, waiting for flights back home.
Many more people suffered burns, smoke inhalation and other injuries.
"It was so hot all around me, I felt like my shirt was about to catch on fire," Nicoangelo Knickerbocker, a 21-year-old resident of Lahaina, said from one of the four emergency shelters opened on the island.
Mr Knickerbocker heard cars and a gas station explode, and soon after fled the town with his father, bringing with them only the clothes they were wearing and the family dog.
"It sounded like a war was going on," he said.
Disaster expected to be Hawaii's deadliest
Governor Josh Green said the scope of the disaster would surpass that of 1960, one year after Hawaii became a US state, when a tsunami killed 61 people on the Big Island of Hawaii.
"It's going to take many years to rebuild Lahaina," Mr Green said at a news conference.
Lahaina, the former capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, is known for its historical and cultural significance, and as such is a major tourist destination.
The 200-year-old Waiola Church was among the structures destroyed by the fire, local media reported.
The landmark was the focal point of Christianity on Maui and the burial site of early members of the royal family, according to the church's website.
The fate of some of Lahaina's other treasures remains unclear.
An 18-metre-tall banyan tree marking the spot where Hawaiian King Kamehameha III's 19th-century palace stood was still standing after the fire swept through the town, though some of its boughs appeared charred, according to a Reuters witness.
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Search for bodies begins after Maui wildfire, amid questions about whether residents received warning - ABC News
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