VIDEO: The official death toll from the Lahaina wildfire disaster has been revised down from 115 to 97 amid new DNA analysis and a painstaking effort to catalog remains, many of which are incomplete and in a very degraded state, Maui police announced Friday.
Of the 97, authorities said 74 people have been officially identified.
Meanwhile, police said the number of unaccounted for stands at 31. Each of those people has a missing persons report filed with the Maui Police Department, said Maui Police Chief John Pelletier.
He added the new accounting helps to paint a clearer picture of what the final death toll will be.
The number of people unaccounted for plus the number of people officially identified equals 105.
“The purpose of this was not to confuse anybody,” Pelletier said, noting that the original list of unaccounted for individuals was in the thousands.