By Marco Garcia
KAHULUI, Hawaii (Reuters) -The death toll from a wildfire that killed at least 55 people on Hawaii's Maui island was expected to rise on Friday, as search teams prepared to comb through the charred ruins of a historic resort town for more victims.
The inferno, which erupted on Tuesday, reduced the town of Lahaina to piles of smoldering debris as it torched 1,000 buildings, incinerated cars and left thousands homeless in what officials say is already the worst natural disaster in the state's history.
Cadaver dogs from California and Washington state will assist in the grim task of recovering human remains from the ruins as firefighters work to extinguish hot spots and smaller fires. The fire was 80 percent contained as of Thursday evening, 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 a widespread power and water issues across the community. As of Friday morning, some 11,000 homes and businesses remained without power, according to Poweroutage.us.
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.
Questions remain about whether a siren system intended to warn residents of danger ever sounded. 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.
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 other on the neighboring 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.
Knickerbocker heard cars and a gas station explode, and soonafter fled the town with his father, bringing with them only theclothes they were wearing and the family dog.
"It sounded like a war was going on," he said.
Governor Josh Green said the scope of the disaster would surpass that of 1960, one year after Hawaii became a U.S. state, when a tsunami killed 61 people on the Big Island of Hawaii.
"It's going to take many years to rebuild Lahaina," 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. A 60-foot-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.
The Maui blazes are the latest wildfires that have struck this summer around the globe. Fires forced tens of thousands of people in Greece, Spain, Portugal and other parts of Europe to evacuate, while in western Canada smoke from a series of severe fires blanketed a vast swath of the U.S. Midwest and East Coast.
In a typical year, wildfires char less than 1 percent of Hawaii's acreage, about the same as other U.S. states. But the spread of non-native, fire-prone grasses on former farmland around towns and a warming climate have elevated the threat of wildfires on the islands, according to the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization.
Gregory Knickerbocker, Nicoangelo Knickerbocker's father, described in an interview how the fire barreled toward the town through dry grass fields where sugar cane was once cultivated.
The Lahaina fire is one of three major wildfires on Maui. As of Thursday evening, it was 80% contained, while the Pulehu fire, burning to the east, was 70% contained. There was no estimate for the Upcountry fire in the center of the eastern mass of the island, Maui County said.
On a positive note, the powerful wind gusts that had fanned the fires earlier in the week were forecast to ease to 6 mph (9.7 kph) on Friday, helping efforts by firefighters to secure the fire perimeters.
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Chicago; Editing by Frank McGurty and Jonathan Oatis)