After over 100 people were killed in the Hawaii wildfire, Maui County officials released a list of 388 people who are still “unaccounted for” after the devastating fires, The Washington Post reported.However, within a day of making the list public, at least 100 people were crossed off, after they were reported “safe and sound”.
“They were reported to be safe and sound,” Steven Merrill, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Honolulu Division, said during a news conference Friday.
“Again, we don’t take that for granted. We still understand that there’s hundreds more that we’re still looking for and we will not stop until we find those,” The Post quoted him as saying.
The list of names released Thursday was “a subset of a larger list” that still needs to be vetted, Merrill added.
“The 388 names were names that we had more information on. That’s why we released that first,” Merrill said. “That being said, I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that we still have hundreds of other names where we still need more information.”
Notably, the validated list of names from the FBI that were released on Thursday night is the first of its kind for unaccounted people since the August 8 disaster in Lahaina, the country’s most devastating wildfire in a century. “We’re releasing this list of names today because we know that it will help with the investigation,” Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said in a news release.