Fire ravaged Hawaii’s Maui county sues power firm as FBI names 388 missing

Fire-ravaged Maui County in Hawaii has sued Hawaiian Electric for failing to shut down its equipment despite warnings that the high winds could knock down power lines.

It was one of the latest moves in the devastated county as the FBI released names of 388 people still missing Thursday more than two weeks after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century.

Officials asked anyone who knows a person on the list to be safe to contact authorities.

The FBI compiled the list of names. The number of confirmed dead after fires on Maui that destroyed the historic seaside community of Lahaina stands at 115, a number the county said is expected to rise.

“We also know that once those names come out, it can and will cause pain for folks whose loved ones are listed,” Police Chief John Pelletier said in a statement.

“This is not an easy thing to do, but we want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to make this investigation as complete and thorough as possible.”

Names on the list were deemed validated if officials had a person’s first and last name and a verified contact for the person who reported them missing, officials said.

An additional 1,732 people who had been reported missing have been found safe as of Thursday afternoon, officials said.

On Wednesday, officials said 1,000 to 1,100 names remained on the FBI’s tentative, unconfirmed list of people unaccounted for.

But DNA had been collected from only 104 families, a figure far lower than in previous major disasters around the country.

“The 388 names are a subset of a larger list,” Steven Merrill, a special agent from the FBI’s Honolulu field office, told a press conference in Maui on Friday.

“I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that we still have hundreds of other names where we still need more information.”

The fire is the deadliest in the U.S. since a 1918 forest fire in Minnesota and Wisconsin killed more than 450.

Meanwhile, Hawaiian Electric said it was “very disappointed” that Maui county was suing while an investigation was still underway.