Hawaii wildfire death toll rises to 93 as a shocking new video shows residents being thrown into the ocean after diving in to flee the flames — as the report shows Maui officials warned YEARS ago that it was a tinderbox

The death toll from the Hawaiian wildfires has risen to 93 as new video emerges of residents being thrown around the ocean after diving in to flee flames.

Fires on the island of Maui have now become the deadliest wildfires in modern US history as authorities continue to work to identify the victims.

As the fires engulfed the island, new footage has also emerged of people jumping into the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to escape the flames.

Those from the city of Lahaina are thrown around the choppy waters as thick smoke and embers surround them.

Resident of the historic city told Joan Hayashi Fox 11 that those in the water had to wait eight hours to be rescued.

Hayashi said, “It sounded like a giant torch, we had to run into the ocean. We’ll probably be in the ocean for eight hours. Flames crashed, things fell from the palm tree.’

Federal aid workers are now tasked with sifting through the ashen lunar landscape left behind by the fire that razed the ancient town of Lahaina to the ground.

Teams have marked homes with a bright orange X to record an initial search and contact HR when they discover human remains.

Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said crews with cadaver dogs covered only 3 percent of the search area, and the death toll is expected to rise again.

Pelletier said identifying the dead is extremely challenging because “we pick up the remains and they fall apart”

Pelletier said, “When we find our family and our friends, the remains we find are from a fire that melted metal.”

So far, the remains of two people have been identified and Pelletier is urging those with missing relatives to go to the family help center.

He said, ‘We need you for the DNA test. We need to identify your loved ones.’

On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported that a 2014 report from fire investigators warned that the area was at extremely high risk of burning.

Another 2020 report would also have linked fires to winds from a passing hurricane, similar to the ones that turned the city of Lahaina to ash.

The 2014 report warned that Lahaina was one of Maui’s most fire-prone areas due to its parched grasslands, winds, and steep terrain.

A plan was put in place to protect the Lahaina area from fires, which included thinning vegetation, improving response capabilities, and working with landowners.

On Saturday, Governor Josh Green toured the devastation on Lahaina’s historic Front Street.

He said, “It will certainly be the worst natural disaster Hawaii has ever faced.

“We can only wait and support those who are alive. Our focus now is to reunite people when we can and provide them with housing and health care, and then to rebuild.”

At least 2,200 buildings were damaged or destroyed in West Maui, Mr. Green said, 86% of which were homes.

Island-wide, he added, damage is estimated at nearly $6 billion. Green said it will take an “incredible amount of time” to recover.

At least two other fires have burned on Maui with no reported fatalities so far: in the Kihei area of ​​southern Maui and in the mountainous, inland communities known as Upcountry.

A fourth broke out Friday night in Kaanapali, a coastal community north of Lahaina, but crews were able to put it out, authorities said.

Peg Alm slept in her truck Wednesday night after she was forced from her home in Kuhei when another fire broke out.

“I didn’t know about Lahaina until the next day because we had to evacuate,” she tells DailyMail.com.

After seeing those heartbreaking photos of the devastation on the local news, Alm volunteered to help with the relief effort after answering a social media call.

“I was tired of waking up and crying all morning,” she says before wiping away more tears as she recounts her memories of the historic seaside town.

“This is like the soul of the island has been torn apart,” says the Michigan resident, who has lived on Maui for 15 years.

For the past three days, a dilapidated, long-shuttered wharf restaurant in the nearby harbor of Ma’alaea has been a gathering place for a community still reeling from the deadly wildfires.

Buzz’s Wharf, which closed for good in 2014, is now a center where local volunteers gather to send much-needed supplies to the displaced and desperate residents of the fire-ravaged city.

From the wee hours of Saturday morning, they have been sorting the donations and forming human chains to load trucks on their way to Lahaina.

As they do, some of the native Hawaiians break into prayer and ask for blessings on the deliveries, to the sound of the Pacific Ocean crashing onto the nearby shore.

The cargo consists entirely of donations from fellow islanders, who step in where aid agencies or the government have been too slow.

They include food, water, diapers, clothing and other medical supplies.

Peg, who organizes paddle tours for tourists, was one of dozens of locals who have flocked to Ma’alaea and other aid centers on the island since Thursday.

The newly released death toll surpassed that of the 2018 Northern California Camp Fire, which left 85 dead and destroyed the city of Paradise.

A century earlier, the 1918 Cloquet Fire broke out in drought-stricken northern Minnesota and swept through a number of rural communities, destroying thousands of homes and killing hundreds.

The wildfires are the state’s deadliest natural disaster in decades, topping a 1960 tsunami that killed 61 people.

An even more deadly tsunami in 1946, which killed more than 150 people on the Big Island, led to the development of a territory-wide emergency warning system with sirens that are tested monthly.