The scale of the damage came into sharper focus, four days after a fast-moving blaze leveled the historic resort town, obliterating buildings and melting cars, Reuters reported.
The cost to rebuild Lahaina was estimated at $5.5 billion, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), with more than 2,200 structures damaged or destroyed and more than 2,100 acres (850 hectares) burned.
Hawaii Governor Josh Green warned at a press conference on Saturday afternoon the death toll would continue to increase as more victims were discovered.
Dogs trained to detect bodies have covered only 3% of the search area, Maui County Police Chief John Pelletier said.
Hundreds of people were still missing, though a precise count was not clear.
The death toll made the inferno, which erupted on Tuesday, Hawaii's worst natural disaster, surpassing a tsunami that killed 61 people in 1960, a year after Hawaii became a US state.
The latest figure exceeded the 85 people who perished in a 2018 fire in the town of Paradise, California and was the highest toll from a wildfire since 1918 when the Cloquet fire in Minnesota and Wisconsin claimed 453 lives.
AMK/PR
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