Maui wildfires toll hits 89, deadliest in the US in more than a century
India TodayThe death toll from the Maui wildfires is now at 89, officials said on Saturday, making it the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century. Local officials have described a nightmarish confluence of factors, including communications network failures, powerful wind gusts from an offshore hurricane and a separate wildfire dozens of miles away, that made it nearly impossible to coordinate in real time with the emergency management agencies that would typically issue warnings and evacuation orders. The death toll made the inferno, which erupted on Tuesday, Hawaii's worst natural disaster in history, surpassing a tsunami that killed 61 people in 1960, a year after Hawaii became a U.S. state. In updates posted on Facebook that morning, Maui County said a three-acre brush fire cropped up in Lahaina around 6:30 a.m. but had been contained by 10 a.m.