Locals in Paradise dispute the body count because so much of the area was single, 75+ retirees with no heirs.
That being said, this one was real bad.
I’m from paradise. We counted ~83 crosses on the outside of town just a few weeks after, and they were all named, iirc. So there’s absolutely more than that. Paradise was 25,000 and at one point, I delivered pizzas. I found areas of paradise I had no idea existed and I had lived there since I was in 5th grade.
I might have a picture of those crosses in my Google photos. Gimme a sec.
Here’s a 5 min video I took of each of them: https://photos.app.goo.gl/cWRoi6mD5ymbMRKM6
Quick 9 second pan of all of them: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qaNs6iipANAwWJr79
Here’s a panorama of all of them: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qTc8uKLeqiPNmeXz7
It was higher in Paradise for sure. They stopped reporting more bodies found after the initial count. I’m friends with a couple of locals that worked on the cleanup crews, and they personally had to stop and call the owners of multiple houses about bodies, and they had no idea who would’ve been there. Probably transients or anyone looking for shelter.
How many more are missing?
It absolutely is.
If you recall from 9/11, many people made the decision to jump from those buildings, rather that get burned to death. And by “decision”, I mean something fundamentally primal, and not a rational human being weighing the odds.
The drive to survive is strong in us. Fire is I believe at the top of the hierarchy of motivators deeply woven into our brain to avoid.
As another poster said regarding this particular thread, those people very likely succumbed to smoke inhalation before being burned. Not a great comfort, but it sounds preferable to being conscious and aware when the fire closes in.
… I think it’s time to go look at videos of kittens and puppies now.
How come they don’t have fire fighting boats in Maui? They have all the water in the Pacific Ocean, but no way to spray it on the fire? Hasn’t that tech existed for like 100 years?
What’s the all time record?
A wildfire in Peshtigo, Wisconsin killed between 1,500-2,500 people in 1871.
This is not only the deadliest wildfire in US history, but the deadliest wildfire ever recorded.
all that water there too - you’d think they’d have pumping stations everywhere
Maui’s firefighting efforts may have been hampered by limited staff and equipment.
Bobby Lee, president of the Hawaii Firefighters Association, said there are a maximum of 65 county firefighters working at any given time, who are responsible for three islands: Maui, Molokai and Lanai.
“It’s not that people didn’t try to do anything,” Curran said. “The fire went from zero to 100.” Curran said he had seen horrendous wildfires growing up in California.
But, he added, “I’ve never seen one eat an entire town in four hours.”
