Green says fatalities may have peaked as official list of missing well below estimates

LAHAINA >> Maui County officials Thursday night released the names of 388 people who remain unaccounted for after the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in over a century roared through Lahaina on Aug. 8.

“We’re releasing this list of names today because we know that it will help with the investigation,” said Police Chief John Pelle­tier. “We also know that once those names come out, it can and will cause pain for folks whose loved ones are listed. This is not an easy thing to do, but we want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to make this investigation as complete and thorough as possible.”

The names were compiled by the FBI and based on whether three criteria were met: if the FBI had the first name of the unaccounted person; the last name of the unaccounted person; and they had a verified contact number for the person who reported the individual as unaccounted for.

See the list here or go to www.mauinuistrong.info/unaccountedfor.

Officials are asking that anyone who recognizes a name on the list and knows the person to be safe, or if anyone has additional information about the person that might help locate them, to contact the FBI at 808-566-4300 or HN-COMMAND-POST@ic.fbi.gov as soon as possible.

Maui County said Thursday night that 1,732 people originally reported as unaccounted for have been found safe.

The number of fatalities from the deadly Lahaina fire remains at 115 this week, giving Gov. Josh Green hope that the number of dead may have stabilized.

“To my knowledge they have not found any additional casualties,” Green told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Thursday. “It’s a very hopeful sign.”

Green believes that the task of accounting for Lahaina victims could be completed this weekend.

“Our heartache stands at 115 now,” he said. “God willing it won’t surge much higher.”

At the same time, Green expected the number of unaccounted to fall as the FBI worked with Maui County officials to reduce the list of missing who were reported with similar names, such as “a guy who could have been listed as Michael, Michael Thompson or M.T. or could have been called Scooter as his nickname,” Green said.

Later, in a social media post, Green said the number of unaccounted-for people will drop “very significantly” as the FBI continues to work with Maui police and other agencies to go through the list of people who have been reported missing. He said on Instagram that number “will drop a lot.”

Green also said 95% of the Lahaina burn area has been searched for victims.

The Associated Press this week reported that the number of missing fell dramatically following the 2018 wildfire that killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise, Calif.

Authorities in Butte County, home to Paradise, ultimately published a list of the missing in the local newspaper, a decision that helped identify scores of people who had made it out alive but were listed as missing, the AP reported. Within a month the list dropped from 1,300 names to only a dozen.

Most of the Lahaina victims who have been identified so far were in their 70s, and Green said they include “a very heavy majority of people of Filipino descent. A lot were middle-class hotel workers. You’re seeing parents and multigenerational households. … A lot of people live in unregistered ohana structures. It’s a way that people have afforded housing.”

Asked about concerns expressed by a number of community leaders and residents that survivors who sign up for government aid could forfeit property rights, Green said FEMA has received applications from 10,032 people and rejected about 500, bringing the actual number of apparently legitimate applications to 9,545. The 2020 U.S. census counted 12,702 people living in Lahaina three years ago.

“It appears people understand that … anyone is going to get support from us, from FEMA, the Red Cross or United Way,” Green said.

Some evacuees from Lahaina — including those who testified at this week’s first Maui County Council meeting since the Aug. 8 fire — expressed concerns over the ramifications for Lahaina property owners after Green signed a pre-fire emergency proclamation on July 17 to expedite construction of 50,000 new housing units, most aimed at developing “affordable housing.”

The proclamation empowered a new, 22-member “Build Beyond Barriers” working group to approve and streamline housing construction projects.

Green told the Star- Advertiser on Thursday that it — and other post-fire emergency proclamations — only will lead to reconstruction based on desires from the Lahaina community.

But Green continued to address survivors’ concerns.

“The local community will guide us on what they’d like to build and how they want to do it,” he said.

Over the next 18 months to two years, Green said, community members also will have input on whether to install tiny-home kauhale like on Oahu for temporary housing, or some other form of transitional housing that he said “will have nothing to do with long-term construction.”

The kauhale or temporary housing also could be used to house temporary construction crews to “rebuild Lahaina,” Green said.

He reiterated that a reborn Lahaina “will be on the terms of the people of Lahaina.”

Last week two state agencies — the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and the state Consumer Resource Center — urged Lahaina property owners to report specifics of any unsolicited offers to purchase what’s left of their land from “predatory” buyers in response to anonymous social media reports.

DCCA could not immediately identify any official reports from property owners.

On Thursday, Green did not identify any particular complaints after ordering state Attorney General Anne E. Lopez to review increasing penalties for unsolicited offers on distressed properties, which is illegal in Hawaii “combined with the reality that any kind of rebuilding is months to years off,” Green said.

“People are going to know to stay away,” he said.

The White House has encouraged survivors and evacuees to register for federal assistance at disasterassistance.gov or call 800-621-3362 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

June Shipe, 79, a descendant of Chinese and Native Hawaiian ancestry, said she ignored social media pleas to reject government assistance warning it would forgo her property rights on Shipe’s three-bedroom, two-bath single-family house o n Komo Mai Street in Lahaina.

Shipe was born and raised in Lahaina and said she wants to rebuild when the time becomes right.

In the meantime she’s already been approved for $700 in one-time FEMA aid and showed up at a resource fair put on by U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda last weekend to see what other government benefits might be available to her.

Tokuda and U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono plan to replicate the resource fair from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Lahaina Civic Center Gymnasium at 1850 Honoapiilani Highway.

They will be joined by representatives from FEMA and other federal, state and Maui County representatives to help evacuees navigate the processes to replace government documents and assistance with health care and mental health support, housing, legal and advocacy services, small-business aid, Medicaid and SNAP serv­ices, among other support.

Shuttle service will be available to the fair for evacuees staying in Red Cross shelter hotels at Honua Kai, Royal Lahaina, KBH and Westin Maui and Hyatt hotels in Kaanapali.

Tokuda told the Star- Advertiser on Thursday that she expects the fair to attract another 500 participants or so, who likely will want to begin by reliving the trauma they experienced fleeing the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in over a century.

“There’s a lot of emotion right now, a lot of misinformation swirling around,” Tokuda said.

Talking to volunteers prepared to help, she said, provides “the best thing to really clear up this misinformation that you hear online.”

“We can be that warm hand to connect them to resources,” Tokuda said.

The number of survivors and evacuees who already have applied for FEMA aid represents “a great sign,” she said.

Tokuda spent the day in Kona where she heard from people who own property on Maui, who also had relatives who relocated to Oahu, wondering what aid might be available for them.

“This disaster has displaced so many people outside of Maui County,” Tokuda said. “They all need help.”