After over 100 people were killed in the Hawaii wildfire, Maui County officials released a list of 388 people who are still “unaccounted for” after the devastating fires, The Washington Post reported.
However, within a day of making the list public, at least 100 people were crossed off, after they were reported “safe and sound”.
“They were reported to be safe and sound,” Steven Merrill, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Honolulu Division, said during a news conference Friday.
“Again, we don’t take that for granted. We still understand that there’s hundreds more that we’re still looking for and we will not stop until we find those,” The Post quoted him as saying.
The list of names released Thursday was “a subset of a larger list” that still needs to be vetted, Merrill added.
“The 388 names were names that we had more information on. That’s why we released that first,” Merrill said. “That being said, I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that we still have hundreds of other names where we still need more information.”
Notably, the validated list of names from the FBI that were released on Thursday night is the first of its kind for unaccounted people since the August 8 disaster in Lahaina, the country’s most devastating wildfire in a century.
“We’re releasing this list of names today because we know that it will help with the investigation,” Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said in a news release.
“We also know that once those names come out, it can and will cause pain for folks whose loved ones are listed. This is not an easy thing to do, but we want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to make this investigation as complete and thorough as possible,” The Post quoted him as saying.
Before the validated list was released, the estimated number of unaccounted people had fluctuated this week in what Hawaii Governor Josh Green (D) described as the FBI’s efforts to “un-duplicate” people reported missing.
After Maui County Mayor Richard T Bissen said on Monday that the number of missing was believed to be at around 850, Merrill estimated Tuesday that there were more than 1,000 on an unconfirmed list, as per The Post.
Merrill further said that efforts to confirm those who are unaccounted for have been complicated because of a lack of detail in some reports and the wide array of lists tracking the unaccounted-for individuals.
Meanwhile, the deadliest US wildfire which horrified the entire world, has resulted in the deaths of over 111 people, reported CNN.
Hawaii’s governor had called it the “deadliest US wildfire” in more than 100 years