Yahoo TV

STORY: 4156

Cadaver dogs sift through the ruins of Lahaina as the death toll continues to rise

making the Maui wildfires in Hawaii the deadliest the U.S. has seen in more than a century.

4147

The scale of the damage became clear. This area of devastation used to be a hotel that had stood for over 120 years.

Thousands of structures have been damaged or destroyed, and more than 2,000 acres of land burned, says the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"We have to make sure that this is safe as we see some of these structures that are still standing, our urban search and rescue teams are marking them, whether they're structurally safe or not."

FEMA estimated the cost to rebuild Lahaina at $5.5 billion.

4163

Many are still looking for relatives missing since the blaze. June Lacuesta has visited shelters and the Family Resource Center as he searches for nine family members.

“I would like to find the Quijano family, Coloma family and Villegas families, which is three days now that everybody's looking for them.”

Hawaii Governor Josh Green warned the death toll would continue to increase as more victims were discovered.

Officials say dogs trained to detect bodies have covered only 3% of the search area so far.

The state's emergency notification system and decision-making during the fire are set to be reviewed...

after some residents questioned whether more could have done to warn them before the fire overtook their homes.

Sirens stationed around the island - intended to warn of impending natural disasters - never sounded, and widespread power and cellular outages hampered other forms of alerts.

Officials blamed communications network failures, winds of up to 80 miles per hour from an offshore hurricane and a separate wildfire dozens of miles away.

All of which made it nearly impossible to coordinate in real time with the emergency management agency that would typically issue warnings and evacuation orders.