Democracy Dies in Darkness

More than 800 people still listed as missing from Maui wildfires

Updated August 22, 2023 at 12:03 a.m. EDT|Published August 21, 2023 at 12:45 p.m. EDT
Tim Laborte holds fliers featuring a photo of his stepfather, Joseph Lara, who has been missing since wildfires raged through Maui. (Liliana Salgado/Reuters)
6 min

Some 850 people are still missing after the wildfires that torched parts of Maui and devastated the historic town of Lahaina, according to local officials, with 85 percent of the disaster area searched as of Sunday.

The official death toll in the deadliest U.S. fire in more than a century stood at 115 as of Monday evening local time, but that number was expected to increase as more victims are identified. Twenty-seven of the dead had been identified by Sunday, nearly two weeks after the fires, but officials had been able to locate and notify relatives of only 11 victims.