The official figure of 99 deaths could double
MADRID, 15 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The governor of Hawaii has assured that the death toll from the fires that have devastated part of the archipelago in recent days, especially the island of Maui, has risen to 99, a figure that “will increase significantly.”
“(The number of deaths) will grow very significantly. We are studying all the figures,” the governor of Hawaii, Josh Green, told CNN, who has announced that this number could double in the next ten days. .
Green has stated that efforts to find more of the missing, whose number is not yet clear, are slow but steady due to poor conditions, with temperatures in some areas still too hot for sniffer dogs, which can only endure 15 minutes of work in a row.
The credit rating agency Moody’s Analytics has estimated the damage caused by the flames between 3,000 million and 7,500 million dollars (between 2,750 million and 6,800 million euros).
Of the three main fires on Maui, one has been 100 percent contained for days, while the other two are 60 and 80 percent, according to the county. Some areas remain blocked off and Police Chief John Pelletier estimated over the weekend that only 3 percent of burned areas had been tracked.
Parallel to the extinction and tracking work, the requests for accountability are also advancing, with some voices calling for clarification why the alert system did not work on time or if the electrical wiring had something to do with the start of the the fires, fanned by hurricane force winds.
This tragedy is already considered the deadliest natural disaster in recent Hawaiian history and the wave of fires that has claimed the most lives in the United States in more than a century: in 1918, 453 people died in a series of fires in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
