A fire in the United States has not claimed so many victims in a century as it does now in Hawaii

So far, 93 victims of the devastating Maui fire have been confirmed, and the number may rise. The Wall Street Journal used data from the National Fire Protection Association to calculate the most destructive fires in the United States, and the paper found that there had not been so many fire casualties since the 1918 disaster in northern Minnesota, which claimed hundreds of lives.

Locals and tourists who were allowed a quick visit to the burning western part of the island of Hawaii could see destroyed homes, burnt cars and smoldering ruins. After the disaster that destroyed the tourist city of Lahaina, according to official estimates, more than $5 billion (1900 billion HUF) will be spent on reconstruction.

The official statement stated that the Lahaina center was still under siege. People are advised to avoid the entire area, as the air is still saturated with toxic particles, and to wear masks and gloves.

According to the governor of Hawaii and other local officials, it remains unclear if sirens were operating in Maui County at the time of the disaster. According to the governor, the fire spread so quickly that the hit to the infrastructure could have prevented the alarm from being triggered in the first place.

According to the preliminary survey, the fire that broke out on Tuesday destroyed an area of ​​approximately 9 square kilometers.

According to local utilities, one of the three power lines that supply West Maui has already been restored.

According to the Wall Street Journal, local fire experts had previously warned authorities that the city of Lahinma and the surrounding area were at risk of a fire, and the power company had been concerned for years and even deployed drones to monitor the situation. The exact cause of the fire is not yet known, but a fault was reported on one of the power lines 20 minutes before the fire was first reported, according to Whisker Labs, the company that monitors the network. The exact location of the failure is unknown, but it was the first and one of the biggest outages of the night.