The wildfires ripping through Maui will likely be the largest natural disaster the state of Hawaii has ever seen, Gov. Josh Green said Thursday, as the blazes have killed dozens, displaced thousands of others and wiped out communities. At least 55 people have died in the fires, though that number is expected to rise as search and rescue efforts continue across the island, officials said. None of the fires burning in Maui have been completely contained, officials said Thursday. Nearly 11,000 people across Maui are without power late Thursday, according to PowerOutage.us. Crippling outages of vital cellular, internet and radio networks are also hindering emergency teams from contacting those who may need help, officials said. The outages are also preventing some from contacting their missing family members or providing loved ones updates on their status. It could take days or even weeks to fix networks, and officials are relying on satellite phones to communicate emergency information. Officials are still working to determine how many people are still unaccounted for across Maui, island police chief John Pelletier said Thursday, citing challenges in communicating without cellular or radio signals. A search and rescue team from California is headed to join crews from the US Coast Guard, Navy and other agencies, which already searching on the ground, by sea and by helicopter. The wildfire that tore through Lahaina was 80% contained as of late Thursday local time, Maui County officials said. Firefighters have also made progress battling two other major fires on the island. The Pulehu fire — located further east in Kihei — was 70% contained on Thursday and another fire in the hills of Maui's central Upcountry was still being assessed. "Many hundreds of homes" have been destroyed by fires, Green said, leaving Hawaiian officials to seek long-term housing for thousands of displaced residents. The state will begin by seeking 2,000 rooms for the unhoused, he said. Residents with spare rooms or rental properties have also been urged to volunteer to shelter those in need. As officials have urged travelers to leave the island, more than 14,000 people were taken off the island Wednesday and an additional 14,500 were expected to be moved off by the end of the day Thursday, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Those individuals were either sent to other Hawaiian islands or were taken back home, it said. It will be several years before Maui is able to recover and rebuild following this week's devastation -- and it will come at a high cost, Green said. "It will be in the billions of dollars, without a doubt," he said. President Joe Biden signed a disaster declaration on Thursday that will direct significant federal resources toward recovery in Maui and the Big Island. Some of Maui's scorched historical sites, however, can never be replaced. Taking stock of the damage in historic Lahaina, officials have described the sheer devastation that befell the township. Alice Lee, chair of the Maui County Council, told the BBC World Service's Newsday program how the fire razed the "beautiful" Front Street, the town's main strip. "The fire traversed almost the entire street, so all the shops and little restaurants that people visited on their trips to Maui, most of them are burnt down to the ground," Lee said, adding: "So many businesses will have to struggle to recover. "We're trying to go through all the rubble and all the burnt buildings. So it's going to take us a while," she said. Hawaii is no stranger to wildfires, but those of the past few days have been called the worst in the state's history. It is not known exactly what started the deadly fires (this is being investigated), but a combination of conditions - which authorities say are exacerbated by climate change - have made them worse. Firefighters are up against hurricane winds and drought fuelling the flames, but say they have contained most of them. On neighboring Big Island, there are at least three big blazes too, but officials on Thursday said they were under control. — Agencies
