Maui police chief John Pelletier on Tuesday (August 22) outlined the grisly search for bodies after the fires that devastated the city of Lahaina, Reuters reports.
Pelletier said a thorough search was being carried out but some victims had been so badly burned that it was impossible to recover any more than ashes.
FBI Special Agent in-charge Steven Merrill said between 1000 and 1100 people were still unaccounted.
Authorities have asked relatives of those missing people to provide DNA samples to help in the effort to identify the remains found in the rubble.
The fires, which started the night of Aug. 8, wreaked widespread destruction in Lahaina. The city of about 13,000 people on northwestern Maui was once a whaling center and the Hawaiian Kingdom's capital, and now draws 2 million tourists a year.
