Search for wildfire victims continues in Maui

Bangkok Post

Search and identification efforts were underway Saturday as teams worked tirelessly to find victims of the wildfires that scorched Maui on August 8, killing at least 111 people. - REUTERS

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00:00 Search and rescue teams with dogs and heavy equipment sifted through the charred remains

00:06 of Lahaina over the weekend as the search for victims continued in the aftermath of

00:10 wildfires that devastated Maui.

00:14 Task Force Leader Todd Magliocca said teams were searching every address for human remains.

00:19 "Big search area, devastating fire.

00:23 I've not seen anything like this in my entire 30 years in the fire service and been to some

00:31 pretty significant incidents.

00:33 The intensity, the population density, all those things combined have got us where we

00:39 are today."

00:40 Hawaii Governor Josh Green said on Friday that the death toll was still expected to

00:46 rise.

00:47 "There are now 470 search and rescue workers and 40 search dogs combing through the hundreds

00:52 of burned buildings and they've already completed searching more than 60 percent of the disaster

00:58 area.

01:00 The number of lives we have lost has climbed to over 100 and we expect it to increase each

01:05 day as we continue our search."

01:08 Green said the fast-moving Maui fire, fueled by wind gusts of up to 80 miles per hour,

01:13 destroyed more than 2,200 buildings and damaged roughly 500 more at an estimated cost of nearly

01:20 $6 billion.

01:22 Meanwhile the resort town's iconic banyan tree has been undergoing life-saving treatment

01:28 since the fire.

01:29 Arborist Stephen Nimms is leading the effort.

01:32 "We checked underneath the bark of all the lower trunks of the tree and we found that

01:38 there's still live tissue.

01:40 We didn't see any major charring or scarring of the tree.

01:44 It's kind of going into a holding stage.

01:47 So that's what I feel the tree's doing right now and what we're doing is just like someone

01:51 in a coma, they give them an intravenous shot.

01:54 Same way with the tree, we're giving it the intravenous shot with the aeration and the

01:59 treatments that we're doing right now."

02:01 Nimms said that while the historic tree is important to the community, he emphasized

02:06 that there are bigger priorities in Maui's recovery efforts.

02:09 "It's a treat.

02:10 We've got so many people that have lost their lives, lost their families, lost their livelihoods

02:16 and lost everything else here that I'm just saying is that that's where the focus should

02:22 be and we take care of that.

02:24 There's greater disasters out there than the tree."

02:27 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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