A thousand people remain unaccounted for following the deadliest natural disaster in Hawaii’s state history, as officials warned the death toll of 53 from Tuesday and Wednesday’s wildfires was likely to rise significantly.
Josh Green, the governor of Hawaii, stressed that he was not saying 1,000 people were dead, but merely that communication was impossible and theire whereabouts unknown.
Asked on Thursday evening for the number of dead, Green said: ‘Honestly, we don’t know.
‘And here’s the challenge: there’s no power, no internet, no phone, no radio. You compound some of that. So when we’re speaking to our officers, we need them to get a sat phone.
‘There’s around 1,000 missing.
‘It doesn’t mean that many have passed – I’m not saying that at all – but because we can’t contact them we can’t know.’
Green said that cadaver dogs were being brought in from California and Washington to assist the search.
‘We have a family assistance center set up, so anyone missing anyone at all, people can go there and give their details,’ he said.
‘If we can reunify people we will, and give notifications if we need to.’
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