Maui wildfires death toll rises to 111 as crews search the burn area, many dealing with their own losses | CNN

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A growing army of hundreds combing through the burned ruins on Maui – including many dealing with losses themselves – have searched over a third of the wildfire burn areas, Maui authorities said, warning the death toll will likely continue climbing.

So far, at least 111 deaths have been confirmed in the wildfires, according to a release from Maui County. Some of those who died were children, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said Wednesday.

“This is unprecedented. No one has ever seen this that is alive today – not this size, not this number, not this volume,” Pelletier said. “And we’re not done.”

“Realize that the responders that are going out there are recovering their loved ones and members of their families,” Pelletier said.

About 38% of the burn zone had been searched as of Wednesday afternoon, according to Pelletier. Authorities were hoping to have covered much of the burn scars by the weekend.

The search through the ashes of what used to be homes, business and historic landmarks is a difficult one, and identifying those lost won’t be easy as the remains are largely unrecognizable and fingerprints are rarely being found, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said.

Complicating matters is that it’s unclear how many people are still unaccounted for as the search continues more than a week after the fires began and spread erratically, engulfing thousands of homes on the island.

The governor told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Wednesday that “probably still over 1,000” people are unaccounted for. Authorities have said it’s difficult to say exactly how many are missing and how many hadn’t made contact due to telecommunications gaps.

As families desperately wait to learn whether their loved ones are among the dead, the police chief asked for patience as a genetics team is brought in and work continues, “so that we can make sure that we’re finding who our loved ones are, and that we make the notifications with dignity and honor.”

Meanwhile, authorities have been asking family members of missing people to provide DNA samples to help with the identification effort. As of Tuesday, people searching for answers had provided 41 DNA samples, according to county officials.

Brenda Keau told CNN her husband provided authorities with a DNA sample to help find his 83-year-old mother.

The couple knew the woman may be among those who died in the fire when they found her home in hard-hit Lahaina burned to the ground, she said.

“We accepted it on the day that we saw that there was no house, but you never give up hope,” Keau said.

The search mission through the burn areas has expanded over the past week, with 40 canines coming in from 15 different states to help search through the ruins, Jeff Hickman of the Hawaii Department of Defense told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

“We’ll start to bring closure to those who need it and identify those missing,” Hickman said. “There’s assistance centers helping those who are missing, there’s civilian lists going around and DNA being collected to help make the match and help people find those who are still missing.”

Here’s the latest on what’s happening on Maui:

As Maui residents take stock of the destruction, many dealing with the loss of their homes or loved ones are also fighting fires, searching for remains or caring for burn patients.

When the fires began last Tuesday and overwhelmed crews as powerful winds whipped the area, some were firefighters battling the flames knowing their own homes could burn.

“The people that were trying to put out these fires lived in those homes – 25 of our firefighters lost their homes,” Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said Wednesday.

Maui firefighter Aina Kohler was on the front lines the day the fire broke out and told CNN affiliate KITV she stuck to her mission to save lives, even as her house burned to the ground.

By the time flames reached her home, firefighters had run out of water, she told the station.

“That was honestly the most disheartening thing of my life. I felt the supply and I’m like it’s limp. Just leaving a house to burn because we don’t have enough water is like something I’ve never experienced before,”she said.

Kohler said she also saw two of her fellow firefighters lose their homes while battling the fires.

“They watched their homes burn as they fought the fire for other homes in their neighborhood,” she explained. “That hit really hard.”

“It’s not just firefighters that were out there risking their lives to help people,” her husband Jonny Varona, also a firefighter, said. “It was the community. Everybody down there understood what was happening. You couldn’t just let people die without trying to help them.”

The national guardsmen going through the burn zone are also residents of the area.

“The motivation is the families,” Hickman told CNN. “This is a community-based organization. These are guardsmen who are from the area. This is their community.”

“They’re used to cleaning up debris, maybe protecting people from going down certain roads because of lava or floods. This is brand new,” Hickman said.

Wade Ebersole, chief operating officer of Maui Health, said it’s a difficult time for hospital employees as well.

Maui Memorial Medical Center has treated 148 patients as of Wednesday morning who have injuries related to the fires, including 67 who had burns or smoke-related problems, according to Ebersole.

“This is a small, very tight-knit community, and we are one degree of separation from most people on the island. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone that isn’t directly connected to someone who’s been directly impacted by the fires,” Ebersole said. “That is a scar that we will carry for a very long time.”

As Hawaiian Electric faces questions for not shutting down power lines when high winds created dangerous fire conditions, the company that runs a sensor network on Maui says it detected multiple major utility grid faults hours before fires started.

The sensor network detected an “increasingly stressed utility grid” on Maui, beginning late August 7 and into the morning of August 8, Bob Marshall, CEO of Whisker Labs, said on “CNN This Morning” Wednesday.

“Through the overnight hours, when all the fires ignited, we measured 122 individual faults on the utility grid,” Marshall said.

Video taken at the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Makawao and first reported by The Washington Post appears to show a power pole faulting just before 11 p.m. on August 7. Soon after, what appears to be flames are seen.

The sensor system provided “verification that, indeed, this was very likely caused by a fault on the utility grid,” Marshall said.

The Makawao fire was hours before and miles away from the fire that decimated the historic portions of Lahaina in Western Maui, but Marshall said sensors detected faults on the grid before that fire, too.

A class-action lawsuit filed over the weekend alleges the wildfires were caused by Hawaiian Electric’s energized power lines that were knocked down by strong winds.

The company and its subsidiaries “chose not to deenergize their power lines after they knew some poles and lines had fallen and were in contact with the vegetation or the ground,” the suit alleges.

Jim Kelly, Hawaiian Electric vice president, told CNN Sunday in an email that the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation. He added precautionary shut-offs have to be arranged with first responders.

“Electricity powers the pumps that provide the water needed for firefighting,” Kelly said.

“We know there is speculation about what started the fires, and we, along with others, are working hard to figure out what happened,” Darren Pai, a spokesperson for Hawaiian Electric, told The Washington Post.