The wildfire death toll stands at 106 in Maui and is expected to climb, and identifying the lost will be no easy task, says Hawaii Gov. Josh Green. He tells CNN that "this is much like you see in a war zone or what we saw with 9/11," with remains generally unrecognizable and lacking fingerprints. That means investigators will work to create DNA profiles and try to match them with DNA samples from relatives. "We're asking all of our loved friends and family in the area who have any concern to go get swabbed at the family support center so that we can match people genetically," Green says.
Thus far, only five of the victims have been identified, and only two of those publicly: Robert Dyckman, 74, and Buddy Jantoc, 79, both Lahaina residents. Roughly a third of the affected area had been searched as of Tuesday, with 20 cadaver dogs involved in the effort. Reuters profiles those dogs, who complete a year of advanced training and can search "up to a couple dozen" burned homes per day; an estimated 1,900 homes were destroyed in the blaze. Dogs used at fire scenes are trained to indicate the presence of human remains in a manner that doesn't damage the scene: They lay down.
The BBC notes these dogs are able to find "those that have been burnt to ashes that would be difficult to detect with the naked eye." Identifying such remains could take years, the BBC notes, citing the five months it took to conclusively identify all 72 people who died in a fire at Grenfell Tower in London in 2017. At that scene, investigators relied on mesh sieves to find the smallest pieces of human remains. In Maui, roughly 1,300 people remained missing as of Tuesday. The population of Lahaina was given at 12,700 in the 2020 Census, while CBS News puts Maui's full population at 165,000. (More Hawaii wildfires stories.)
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