Hawaii Attorney General Opens Investigation Into Maui Wildfire Response

Days after a devastating wildfire raged through Maui, destroying thousands of buildings and taking at least 93 lives, Hawaii's Attorney General is opening an investigation into the state's response to the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history.

The investigation will focus on critical decision-making and the standing policies that influenced those decisions, Attorney General Anne Lopez announced Friday.

“My Department is committed to understanding the decisions that were made before and during the wildfires and to sharing with the public the results of this review,” the statement says. “As we continue to support all aspects of the ongoing relief effort, now is the time to begin this process of understanding.”

Maui residents who live in the path of the fire said they received text alerts, but the state’s siren system remained silent, according to CNN.

“There wasn’t really an evacuation notice for us,” Cole Millington, who lives in the historic Hawaiian town of Lahaina, told the network.

His only warning was a “huge plume of black smoke,” he said.

As of Sunday morning, the death toll from the wildfires was 93, according to the Associated Press. That figure — which already makes the Maui wildfires the deadliest in over a century — will almost certainly rise as the search continues in Lahaina.

Maui Police Chief John Pelletier told the AP that cadaver dogs have covered just 3% of the search area.

“We’ve got an area that we have to contain that is at least 5 square miles and it is full of our loved ones,” he said.

As for the death toll, “none of us really know the size of it yet,” Pelletier said.

U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda told CNN that Hawaii “underestimated the lethality, the quickness of fire.”

Redundancies in the emergency alert system failed, she said.

“The Department of the Attorney General shares the grief felt by all in Hawaiʻi, and our hearts go out to everyone affected by this tragedy,” Lopez said in her statement.