On the west coast of maui. Firefighters are continuing to battle wildfires with officials saying they are 80 contained. This report from our North America correspondent sean daly. A community in smouldering ruins. Many homes here burned to charge rex. The church and the harbour among the Historic Site wiped out by the flames that tore indiscriminately through the former picturesque tourist town. The us marines and National Guard among the Emergency Workers on the ground. The us President Joe Biden has declared the situation as a major disaster. We situation as a maor disaster. We are situation as a maor disaster. We seeing situation as a major disaster. Are seeing loss of life here. As you know, the number has been rising and we will continue to see loss of life but we have extraordinary professionals working on this job. We also have seen many hundreds of homes destroyed. And that is going to take a great deal of time to recover from. To take a great deal of time to recover from. ,. ,
be in your lahaina in the vision of the residents but at the end of the day, you really cannot replace what was lost. we are talking history, lahaina used to be the capital of the kingdom, the old lahaina court house has ancient homeland artefacts, it had a flag, a frail tooth laced with human hair, priceless artefacts and they are lost forever and it is heartbreaking. as you can imagine, reports have been affected by the flights. people happen arriving back on the us mainland. ranji sinha, from the bbc s us partner cbs, spoke to some of the people who made it off the island to return to seattle. thus, it was just black. you thus, it wasjust black. you could see the orange glow of the fires.