FEMA administrator says search in Maui is 78 percent complete

Federal Emergency Management Administrator Deanne Criswell said on Sunday that the search in Maui County to identify is 78 percent complete.

“What we’re doing is making sure that we go through every bit of the burned area to make sure that we have identified any remains that might be there,” Criswell said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” 

“The report that I got last night is that we are 78 percent complete with the search and our teams are continuing to go through, through the day, to go through every part of it and help identify anybody that might still be missing,” she continued. 

Criswell noted that other agencies have been deployed to assist in recovery efforts to identify remains and to reunify families, as people continue to search for their loved ones.

“We brought in additional teams. The FBI is on scene, the Department of Defense, along with HHS, to help identify and also reunify people that may be in shelters, may have gone somewhere else, making sure that we can work together to identify who is still unaccounted for, where people are, as we continue to identify those that, unfortunately, have been lost by this tragic event, making sure that we link up all of that information,” Criswell said. 

Criswell will be traveling to Maui with President Biden on Monday. She said she has been in close communication with Biden throughout the recovery process to give him updates. Biden on Friday amended his initial Hawaii disaster declaration to authorize an increase in the level of federal funding for emergency work that Hawaii is undertaken as a result of the result of wildfires. 

“Under the President’s order today, Federal funds for debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance has been increased to 100 percent of the total eligible costs for a continuous 30-day period of the State’s choosing within the first 120 days from the start of the incident period,” the announcement read on Friday.