Maui County officials issued a list of 388 people who are still “unaccounted for” following the devastating fires after more than 100 people died in the Hawaii wildfire, according to The Washington Post.
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 FBI’s verified list of names that was made public on Thursday night is the first of its kind for people who haven’t been found since the disaster in Lahaina on August 8—the nation’s deadliest wildfire in a century. According to a news release from Maui Police Chief John Pelletier, “We’re releasing this list of names today because we know that it will help with the investigation.” “We also know that people whose loved ones are listed will experience pain once those names are made public. The Post reported him as saying, “We want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to make this investigation as complete and thorough as possible. This is not an easy thing to do, but we want to make sure that we are doing it.