LAHAINA, Hawaii — Hawaiian officials updated the death count from the Maui wildfires to 67. The update comes as residents have been allowed in to see the damage up close.
Eighty percent of the town of Lahaina has been destroyed.
That includes restaurants, retail stores and hotels along Front street, a popular destination for visitors.
"What I'm hearing is it's pure devastation right, and a lot of people think of Lahaina as a vacation town, this is a small town, a small community of people that work and live in this place. This is people's livelihoods that have been lost. It is all gone and we haven't even started to assess what's taking place in upcountry and Kula as well because there's a lot of loss of structures as well," said Nicholas Winfrey, president of Maui United Way.
Winfrey hasn't been able to see the destruction in person.
Instead, he has been spending 20 hours a day on his phone and computer getting resources to where they need to go.
"Obviously, there's individuals dealing with a lot of the immediate effects. What we're working on is strategic planning to support those agencies basically in short, intermediate and long term and really get funds interjected into the community as quickly as possible," said Winfrey.
Winfrey, who once worked for Rancho Coastal Humane Society in San Diego, says it's a challenging task given how big this crisis is.
“Here’s my analogy. A firecracker went off on an ant hill and all of the ants are running around trying to figure out what to do. This is typically what happens in a massive disaster," said Winfrey.
Some of the needs right now include financial assistance, food and housing for those who lost everything, as well as shelter for displaced animals.
Above all, Winfrey says the priority remains locating the missing. Dozens have already been declared dead, and Winfrey fears that number will grow.
"I think a lot of senior citizens had a tough time making it out and I don’t think that they did," said Winfrey.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has already deployed urban search and rescue teams.
FEMA and Red Cross workers are also in Maui helping out.
When asked how he's coping with it all, Winfrey told CBS 8 that spending time helping others is, in a way, helping himself.
"I wanna crawl in the corner in the fetal position in all honesty. If I sit too long and think about how bad this devastation is, the people I haven't been able to get a hold of that I work with, I can’t do that. My military mindset is focusing on what we need to do, but I got about two hours of sleep last night and every time I woke up, I started crying."
To donate to Maui United Way, click here.
To donate to the American Red Cross, click here.
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