Several cadaver dogs from Southern California fire departments on Sunday were on their way to Maui to assist in the ongoing search for victims.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 And as Andrew just mentioned, there are several cadaver dogs from Southern California on Sunday on their way to Maui to assist in those search efforts.
00:09 K-9 teams from the L.A. County Fire Department's Urban Search and Rescue and the Orange County Fire Authority were being deployed to help.
00:16 Several of the dogs and their handlers arriving at LAX Sunday morning en route to Hawaii.
00:21 Authorities warning that the effort to find and identify the dead was still in the early stages.
00:26 Crews with these dogs already on site have covered, as you heard, just 3 percent of that search area.
00:33 We're familiar with the brush fires in California as well, but we've kind of been preparing for this for some time, for many years.
00:42 Various years for depending on how long we've been on the team.
00:45 And this is what we do, and so these dogs have been waiting for their time to shine and to show support for the families out there, bring them some closure.
00:53 Authorities say identifying the dead is challenging with just two people so far identified.
00:59 At least 2,200 buildings damaged or destroyed in West Maui, nearly all of them residential.
01:04 Across the island, damage estimated at close to $6 billion.
01:09 The wildfires are Hawaii's deadliest natural disaster in decades, surpassing a 1960 tsunami that killed 61 people.