Terri Thomas’s family has been waiting for days.
Thomas is a much-loved aunt, who has a beautiful smile, and loves outdoor adventure. Her home in Lahaina on Hawaii was destroyed by fires Tuesday.
Family members have been convinced by the witness reports that they received. But nearly a week after the fire started, Ms. Thomas’s relatives remain in excruciating suspense, without any official news on her status and little sense of When, or even whether, the government might contact them.
“It’s tragic — this hopeless feeling,” said Ms. Thomas’s niece, Terra Thomas, who lives in North Carolina. She acknowledged that she could understand the situation. of Situation “but I feel like there could be better communication, especially when it comes to the people that are now presumed missing.”
You can search for a specific keyword. for people killed in the wildfire, the country’s deadliest in more than a century, and the effort to identify the 93 found so far has moved slowly.
You can also read about the advantages of using of On Saturday, the authorities confirmed their identities. of Only two people had been found and the canine teams were only beginning to search for victims. The speed of the search was attributed to officials. of Many residents have criticised the slowness of the government’s response. of the destruction and to Maui’s remoteness, which complicated the arrival of out-ofSearch teams are available in every state.
“The heat of the fire, the intensity and the speed of the fire — it literally just stopped everything in its tracks,” Jill Tokuda is a Democrat who represents Maui at the United States Congress. “It’s going to make identification and notification really difficult,” She said adding, “it’s painful just to think about that.”
Since days, the families are struggling to know their status of West Maui is a great place to visit your loved ones. Spotty-to-nonexistent phone reception, especially in the immediate aftermath, made it hard for Allow survivors to reach out to loved ones. The road blocks prevented the people of other areas from reaching survivors. of The island is a good place to look.
Residents have found relief following their agonizing waiting. Noelle Manriquez said that it took her three days to get from Lahaina with her family. for Her parents also survived. She said that time was “very hard, very stressful.”
Some people are still unaware of what is going on.
Chief John Pelletier of Maui Police Department has urged the public to stop searching for Take a DNA Test for your loved ones. This could be used to identify the remains.
“The remains we’re finding is through a fire that melted metal,” Chief Pelletier said. “We have to do rapid DNA to identify.”
Terra Thomas is open to the idea of taking a similar test in order to find out more about her Aunt, who was an important mother figure for Terra’s family and loved Lahaina. of She has nieces.
Terri Thomas is 62 years old and has no relatives in Hawaii. This means that there are no people who can go to Maui’s support center to provide a DNA test to authorities. Terra Thomas lives more than 4,500 miles away and has been calling for information. She has reported that there are problems. “busy phone lines and unavailability.”
State and county officials did not provide information about Ms. Thomas’s status when asked by The New York Times on Sunday.
In interviews and on social media, it is clear that there are a lot of them. of Maui-related people endured difficult days of Uncertainty about status of Friends and family members. The waits for those loved ones were agonizing. for Harry and Toni Troupe were two such survivors, who, despite having reached safety without a way of communicating their good news.
Troupes and their huskies left their Lahaina house on Tuesday night, moving to a location north. of They were then told to get further away from the fires. On a dirt-road, they slept in cars.
On Wednesday, they slept at a friend’s house in Napili-Honokowai, but neither they nor their hosts had cell service, internet or electricity.
The only time they could get their mobile phones to work was Thursday evening for It was a shock to Ms. Troupe when she saw the 63 texts, increasingly urgent and frantic in nature from her friends and relatives asking if she was okay.
Two-thirds of a million people are able to vote. of One of the texts came from Ms. Troupe’s cousin, who said she was going to report her missing if there wasn’t a response soon. The cousin posted about the couple to Facebook, asking for any information.
“We were on the missing list, but finally people started to get ahold of us,” Ms. Troupe said that people from the Midwest, as well as Bali, had spoken to her.
Social media was helpful once the couple had been able to let loved ones know they were safe. One of the friends who read the Facebook post, offered the couple a home in West Maui at Napili Honokowai. They are now living there with their two dogs.
Few days before, a couple was driving down to Lahaina and observing the wreckage from afar. of The ashes of their neighbourhood of Their house. There was no need to move closer.
“We were so numb to the whole thing,” Troupe was 66. “We just couldn’t believe it happened.”
Emily Cochrane Contributed reporting
