Biden says he is considering visiting Maui for the beach weekend as the number of fatalities from wildfires rises to 93.
Biden is staying at his Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, home over the weekend.
He rode his bike with the First Lady on Sunday morning.
The number of fatalities on the Hawaiian island of Maui is increasing in the meantime.
President Joe Biden informed reporters that he was thinking about traveling to Hawaii to personally witness the destruction brought there by wildfires.
As the death toll on the island of Maui reached 93, making it the deadliest American wildfire in more than 100 years, he said very little while riding his bike.
In Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, Biden was spending the weekend at his oceanfront home.
A little after 9am, he and the first lady left for their routine bike ride.
He yelled at reporters who inquired about travel arrangements, “We’re looking at it.
A presidential visit to the destroyed island is currently all but unavoidable.
Even without having to cope with providing officers for security, traffic, and crowd control duties, emergency services are already operating at capacity or above.
The loss of more than 2000 properties has resulted in an estimated $6 billion in damage.
Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii spoke about the destruction in Lahaina on Sunday.
She spoke of traversing the demolished town and coming upon a row of scorched automobiles by the water’s edge where it was obvious the occupants had escaped fast, most likely into the water.
We are going through a time of loss and mourning, Hirono said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
She added that the attorney general was looking into the matter of why the early warning sirens were silent.
Hirono claimed that “there is not enough recognition that we will have to combat these kinds of wildfires.”
The death toll is anticipated to increase further.
Only 3% of the search area has been covered by teams using cadaver dogs, according to Maui Police Chief John Pelletier.
Pelletier claimed that it was extremely difficult to identify the deceased because “we pick up the remains and they fall apart.”
‘When we locate our relatives and our friends, the remains that we’re finding are through a fire that melted metal,’ he continued.
The task at hand now has a somber reality.
According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, it has begun spray-painting vehicles and structures on the town’s Front Street with a ‘X’ to indicate that they have received a first search but that there may still be human remains inside.
If workers discover remains during a second pass, they add the initials “HR.”
No casualties have been recorded in at least two other Maui fires that have been raging in the mountainous interior settlements of Upcountry and the Kihei region of south Maui.
A fourth started on Friday night in Kaanapali, a seaside settlement to the north of Lahaina, but crews managed to put it out, according to officials.
The Lahaina fire has already claimed more lives than the Camp Fire in northern California in 2018, which killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise.
The 1918 Cloquet Fire, which erupted in drought-stricken northern Minnesota and swept through several rural villages, destroyed thousands of homes and claimed hundreds of lives a century earlier.
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