The fatality count from last month's fires has remained at 115, Green said
Maui brothers on organizing relief efforts following wildfires
Maui residents Zane and Matty Schweitzer discuss community relief efforts following the Maui wildfires.
The number of people still missing from the devastating Maui wildfires has dropped to 66, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said Friday. That number is down from 385 a week ago.
"It’s been one month today since the crisis," Green said in a video update shared on his social media Friday. "Our fatality count has remained at 115. The FBI [missing] list, which had been at 385 and is dropping, is now at 66."
He added that 41 missing person reports are being investigated by the Maui Police Department, "so these cases are getting sorted out."
Green also said that while nearly 7,000 people were still in hotel rooms and around 1,100 are in Airbnbs, the government was working to get them into long-term housing.
BIDEN DEDICATES $95 MILLION TO BOLSTER MAUI'S POWER GRID AGAINST FUTURE DISASTERS
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said Friday that the number of missing in Maui has fallen to 66 from 385. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong/File)
The deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century swept through the town of Lahaina on Aug. 8, causing dozens of people to flee to the ocean to escape the flames, destroying more than 2,000 structures and doing an estimated $5.5 billion in damage.
MAUI INVITATIONAL TO HOLD ONLINE AUCTION TO ASSIST WITH WILDLIFE RELIEF
09/08/23 Current Situation pic.twitter.com/Fo71e7dBjL
— Governor Josh Green (@GovJoshGreenMD) September 8, 2023
"Every phone call I get, I think I’m getting that call, the call to tell me that they’ve matched my dad’s DNA, that they found him deceased," Kimberly Buen told The New York Times of giving a DNA sample to the FBI for a potential match to her father, a potential victim. He would have turned 80 years old on Sept. 2 if he is still alive. "Before, I was answering every call, ‘Oh, did they find him? Did they find him?’ And now, I’m in the mode, ‘Did we recover him?’"
Maui police have released the identities of 55 of the people killed so far.
The governor also said that in the coming weeks, authorities will begin to schedule supervised visits for residents to return to and view their properties.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
