The dayslong wildfires ravaging Hawaii's Maui island have killed at least 53 people but the toll is expected to rise, officials said Thursday, warning the number of missing is unclear in a natural disaster the governor said could be the largest in state history.
"We will continue to see loss of life," Gov. Josh Green said in a news conference Thursday. "We also have been many hundreds of homes destroyed, and that's going to take a great deal of time to recover from."
The fires that began Tuesday cut an especially ruinous path in western Maui, where the older part of Lahaina, a town that draws millions of tourists each year, is "all gone," Maui County Mayor Richard T. Bissen Jr. said.
All 53 deaths recorded so far were in "the greater Lahaina town," county Police Chief John Pelletier said. The fires have wiped out cell phone coverage and other communications options in western Maui, slowing officials' efforts to learn how many people are missing, he said.
"Here's the challenge: There's no power. There's no internet. There's no radio coverage," Pelletier said.
Green, after touring Lahaina on Thursday, said the scene was catastrophic.
"What we saw was likely the largest natural disaster in Hawaii's state history," Green said.
CNN's chief climate correspondent Bill Weir said it looks like a "bomb went off" in Lahaina.
"All the iconic buildings are either flattened or just scorched skeletons of their former self," he said.
Even at 53 deaths, the wildfire that leveled Lahaina would be the second deadliest blaze in the United States in a century. The Camp Fire in Paradise, California, killed 85 people in 2018.
The fires in Maui County have damaged or destroyed hundreds of structures, local officials estimate.
"All of those buildings virtually are going to have to be rebuilt," Green said Thursday. "It will be a new Lahaina that Maui builds in its own image with its own values."
Live updates: Deadly wildfires burn across Maui
Here's the latest:
• Thousands are displaced: Roughly 1,400 people slept at an airport Wednesday night. And more than 1,300 residents and tourists stayed in emergency shelters before many of them were taken to the airport to leave the island, Maui County officials said. Thousands of people are believed to have been displaced, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told CNN on Thursday.
• Billions of dollars in losses: Determining the full scope of the fires' impacts on the island will take time, "but it will be in the billions of dollars without a doubt," the governor said Thursday. It will take many years to rebuild Lahaina, where "upwards of 1,700 buildings" may have been destroyed, he told CNN. It appears about 80% of the town is "gone," he said.
• Fires still are burning: As of Thursday, the four largest fires still were active in Maui County, Fire Chief Bradford Ventura said during a news conference. "Additionally, we've had many small fires in between these large fires," he said. "And with the current weather pattern that we're facing, we still have the potential for rapid fire behavior." The wildfire that torched Lahaina was 80% contained by Thursday morning, Maui County officials said.
• Curtailed communication and power outages: Cell service could remain offline for days or even weeks before they're repaired in Maui. Officials have been resorting to satellite phones to communicate with providers on the west side of Maui to restore power to the area, Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke said. Nearly 11,000 homes and businesses were in the dark Thursday, according to the tracking site PowerOutage.us.
• Resources sent to Maui: President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration to provide federal funding for recovery costs in Maui County. California plans to send a search and rescue team to help support efforts on the ground in Maui. Additionally, more than 130 members from the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard have been assigned to provide assistance.
In the initial moments of evacuations, people described horrifying accounts of escaping the flames by jumping into the ocean, with first responders rescuing dozens from the water or the shore.
May Wedelin-Lee, a resident who lost her home in Lahaina, told CNN on Thursday the fires triggered panic in her community as people fled.
"People were crying on the side of the road and begging," she said. "Some people had bicycles, people ran, people had skateboards, people had cats under their arm. They had a baby in tow, just sprinting down the street.
"The apocalypse was happening."
Nearly 30 power poles had fallen on roads while they were still energized, making evacuations and response more challenging, Bissen said Thursday.
The fire was moving so quickly that many left their homes immediately with little notice from authorities, Maui County's fire chief said.
"What we experienced was such a fast-moving fire through the neighborhood that the initial neighborhood that caught fire, they were basically self-evacuating with fairly little notice," Fire Chief Brad Ventura said.