What to know about the wildfires:
- At least 36 people have died in fires in Maui, officials said Thursday. Maui County said the deaths were discovered "amid the active Lahaina fire."
- NBC News' Miguel Almaguer is reporting from Maui.
- Crews continue to battle the Maui and the Big Island fires, which have been fanned in part by strong winds from Hurricane Dora, a Category 4 storm.
- Lahaina, a seaside town that was once the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, has been destroyed in the fires.Satellite images captured the scale of the devastation.
Thirty-six people have died in the Maui County wildfires, officials said Thursday, as blazes continue to rage on the Hawaiian island.
In comparison to California’s history of destructive and deadly blazes, it would rank as #2 on their list of Top 20 deadliest fires.
The 2018 Camp Fire killed 85, the 1993 Griffith Park blaze killed 29, and the Tunnel Fire of 1991 left 25 dead, according to Cal Fire records.
The fires on Maui also outpace the death toll of recent wildfires including the 2017 Tubbs Fire in Northern California that killed 22, the 2020 North Complex Fire that killed 16 and the LNU Complex Fire, also in 2020, that left six dead.
United Airlines and American Airlines said Thursday they are sending planes to Maui to evacuate passengers whose travel plans were upended by wildfires blazing on the island.
“We’ve canceled today’s inbound flights to Kahului Airport so our planes can fly empty to Maui and be used as passenger flights back to the mainland,” United said in a statement.
The airline said it’s monitoring the situation “closely” and “emphasizing safety as always and checking on the welfare of our employees on Maui.”
American Airlines said it expects to operate all of Thursday's scheduled flights to and from Kahului Airport.
The airline said it “added an additional flight and upgraded an aircraft today to ensure customers evacuating are able to do so.”
American Airlines customers whose travel plans were affected by the wildfires are able to rebook without fees, cancel or receive a refund.
Warnings of high winds and the potential for extreme fire behavior were issued Tuesday, but knowing where the fires would spark was impossible to predict, Hawaii's Emergency Management Agency Communication Director, Adam Weintraub, said Thursday.
"You can’t tell exactly where a tree is going to go down. You can’t tell when a roof is going to come off and land on a power line. You can’t tell when somebody’s going to hit a rock with a lawn mower and spark a blaze," he said on NBC's "TODAY" show Thursday.
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