Maui police release identities of 3 more Lahaina fire victims
CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARADVERTISER.COM
The burned-out remains of Weinberg Court Apartments at 615 Honnoapiilani Highway in Lahaina as seen Monday.
UPDATE: 5:05 p.m.
Maui police have released the identities of three more Lahaina residents who are among the 115 confirmed deaths from the Aug. 8 fire that destroyed the historic town.
The three victims, whose families have been notified, are: Joseph Lara, 86; Gwendolyn Puou, 83; and Edward Sato, 76.
Of the 115 confirmed deaths, 48 have been identified and their families notified, and six have been identified but their families have not been located or notified.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE:
WAILUKU >> With search and recovery teams now having surveyed 100% of the nearly 2,200 acres burned in the devastating Aug. 8 Lahaina wildfire, the 115 individuals whose remains were recovered are likely the last recognizable remains to be found, according to a spokesperson for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency’s Joint Information Center.
Hundreds more people are still unaccounted for — 388 at last count on the FBI’s verified list — leaving it uncertain how many more fire fatalities will eventually be identified.
HI-EMA JIC public information officer Jon Heggie today said that recovery efforts will transition to a new, more challenging phase of locating and identifying fire victims from fragments and ash.
“It’s not like the search will stop. It will just not be a grided, complete search because it’s already been searched, truthfully, at least once if not multiple times,” he said. “Now what is left would not be identified with any type of human anatomy.”
The official death toll from the Lahaina wildfire has remained unchanged at 115 since Aug. 21. The Maui Police Department so far has released the names of 45 of the fatalities and on Monday said that six others have been identified but their next of kin had yet to be located or contacted.
Heggie said the focus is now on “trying to come up with methods and procedures to identify bodies that have experienced that high temperature for high duration and identify what that may look like. It may come down to random sampling of rubble for DNA.”
The FBI’s validated list of names of those unaccounted for is available at mauinuistrong.info/unaccountedfor. Anyone who recognizes a name on the list and knows the person to be safe or has additional information that might help locate them should contact the FBI at 808-566-4300 or HN-COMMAND-POST@ic.fbi.gov.
