“I opened the door and the fire was almost on top of us,” he said on Thursday from an evacuation center. Marlon Vasquez, a 31-year-old cook from Guatemala who came to the US in January 2022, said that when he heard the fire alarms, it was already too late to flee in his car. Photograph: Rick Bowmer/APįire engulfed Lahaina, a town of 13,000 residents on Tuesday night when strong winds propelled a blaze that had started in vegetation to the urban center.

The search of the wildfire wreckage on Maui revealed a wasteland of burned out homes and obliterated communities. He pledged that the federal response will ensure “anyone who’s lost a loved one, or who’s home has been damaged or destroyed, is going to get help immediately”. The US president, Joe Biden, on Thursday approved a disaster declaration for Maui, which will allow federal aid be used to help local recovery efforts for areas affected by the wildfires. Recovery will take years and billions of dollars, but the town will rebuild, he said. It does appear that a bomb went off,” he said. “The full extent of the destruction of Lahaina will shock you. “What we’ve seen has been catastrophic,” he said. Hawaii’s governor, Josh Green, described the fires as “likely the largest natural disaster” in state history. At least 30 people were injured, suffering burns and smoke inhalation, and thousands have been displaced.Ĭrews have continued mass evacuation efforts and desperate searches for survivors as displaced residents try to come to terms with what appears to be widespread destruction, particularly in the the historic community of Lahaina, which was almost completely destroyed. The flames moved so rapidly, some survivors escaped by jumping into the ocean and had to be rescued by the coast guard. The disaster began on Tuesday night when three blazes broke out on Maui, cutting off the western side of the island. “When this is all said and done, we just don’t know.” “We don’t know how many people we have dead,” John Pelletier, the Maui police chief, said at press conference on Thursday evening.

Dragon city restaurant burnt down