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The death toll from the Maui fires in Hawaii has risen to 67, making it the state's deadliest natural disaster in more than 60 years, but an expert is predicting the toll to rise into triple digits.
The updated death toll comes from the local Maui County government as a local resident says she was "caught off guard" due to a lack of emergency alerts before bushfires wiped out a historic town.
Hawaiian Governor Josh Green said all responsibility was "on all of us".
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"And that is, we do what we can with the resources we have here far away from the mainland," Green said.
"But this is the first time we've ever experienced this."
Rescue operation
The director of Project Dynamo, a veteran-led international rescue organisation, Bryan Stern told Weekend Today he expects the death toll to rise to triple digits.
He said some of the roads were opening up but it was "really terrible".
"They are running out of food, running out of supplies… there's lots of people that are homeless."
"The communication on the ground is very, very, very poor.
"We have done a number of air evacuations and a number of supply drops and we continue to do that."
Stern said they needed financial help as the helicopters "don't run themselves".
Emergency response
Andrea Padilla lives just outside of Lahaina, where flames tore through the town on Tuesday in the state's deadliest natural disaster since 1960.
Padilla, who is a manager of a local art gallery, said most people who lived near the gallery lost their homes.
"Their experience has been that they weren't given any alerts," Padilla told Today.
"There was no warning.
"Even as I was already on the other side of the island and was receiving texts from them saying they were seeing flames… yet there was nothing on the news.
"There were no emergency alerts on our phones. So I think that everybody was caught off guard."
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She said Hawaiians in general stuck together.
"We help each other out… it's very much aloha spirit here to help people out."
Fuelled by a dry summer and strong winds from a passing hurricane, at least three wildfires erupted on Maui this week, racing through parched brush covering the island.
The most serious one left Lahaina a grid of grey, ashen rubble, wedged between the blue ocean and lush green slopes.
Skeletal remains of buildings bowed under roofs that pancaked in the blaze.
Palm trees were torched, boats in the harbour were scorched and the stench of burning lingered.
Previously, Hawaii Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Adam Weintraub told The Associated Press that the department's records don't show that Maui's warning sirens were triggered on Tuesday, when the Lahaina fire began.
Instead, the county used emergency alerts sent to mobile phones, televisions and radio stations, Weintraub said.
It's not clear if those alerts were sent before outages cut off most communication to Lahaina.
