Maui’s richest resident Jeff Bezos and his partner Lauren Sanchez have said they will donate $100 million to help victims of the Maui wildfires.
In a statement issued by Sanchez, she said: ‘Jeff and I are heartbroken by what’s happening in Maui. We are thinking of all the families that have lost so much and a community that has been left devastated.
‘The immediate needs are important, and so is the longer term rebuilding that will have to happen, even after much of the attention has subsided.
‘Jeff are I are creating a Maui fund and are dedicating $100 million to help Maui get back on its feet now and over the coming years as the continuing needs reveal themselves.’
Bezos has property on the islands alongside stars including Oprah, Larry Ellison, Clint Eastwood and Steven Tyler.
In a statement, the billionaire couple announced they would be starting a fund to get the island back on its feet following the disaster, and pledged $100 million
An aerial image taken on August 10, shows destroyed cars in Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui, Hawaii
The hall of historic Waiola Church in Lahaina and nearby Lahaina Hongwanji Mission are engulfed in flames along Wainee Street
Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sanchez posted on Instagram that the fires were ‘breaking her heart’ prior to their announcement.
The Amazon CEO, 59, owns three-building estate on La Perouse Bay on Valley Isle in Maui worth an estimated $78million.
With a net worth of $162billion, he is the third richest man in the world.
Oprah, worth $2.5billion, owns nearly 2,000 acres of land on Maui and has been living there part-time for 15 years. It’s unclear if any of her land was damaged.
She bought up the most recent parcel – 860 acres – in March this year for $6.6million. Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler also has a home on the island, as does Owen Wilson and Clint Eastwood.
The fire in Maui is the worst natural disaster to have hit Hawaii since a tsunami killed 61 people in 1960. If the death toll continues to rise, as it is expected, it will surpass that grim record to become the deadliest.
It is also on pace to become the deadliest wildfire in recent US history. Over the last 100 years, only the Camp fire in California claimed more lives than have been counted so far, with 68 victims in total.
One thousand people remain unaccounted for in Maui after Tuesday’s catastrophic fire that has so far claimed 55. The death toll is expected to rise as search teams go through homes, or what is left of them, looking for victims.
When the fire torched Lahaina, a town on the island,cell phone towers were incinerated along with every other structure.
It means that the town remains without phone service, and there is no internet, water, or power either and, crucially, that rescue teams cannot get in to help.
‘We as a local nonprofit are not able to even access anything west of Maalaea. West Maui is completely cut off from communication and power. That’s very fluid, but that’s sort of what we’re seeing at a hyperlocal level,’ Lauren Henrie for Maui Rescue Mission told CNN.
In this image obtained from the US Department of Defense, Honolulu Fire Department vehicles and personnel are secured onto a C-17 Globemaster III on August 10, 2023, at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu, Hawaii
Wildfire wreckage is shown Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. Hawaii emergency management records show no indication that warning sirens sounded before people ran for their lives from wildfires on Maui that wiped out a historic town
Maui’s part-time residents include Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos, Steven Tyler, Owen Wilson and more. Larry Ellison owns almost the entire island of Lanai, which sits near to the town of Lahaina
An aerial view shows destroyed homes and buildings that burned to the ground around the harbor and Front Street in the historic Lahaina Town
It was announced today that residents of West Maui that are able to show proof of residency will have access to Lahaina later today.
Measures have been put in place to secure the heavily impacted area of the historic town.
These measures include no unauthorized public access beyond barricaded areas and a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. daily in historic Lahaina town and affected areas.
The curfew is intended to protect residences and property
Michael Havoc Thomas, a military veteran who owns and operates HAVOC, a private rescue and training company in Hawaii, gave a harrowing description of the reality of the devastation.
‘The news will not be able to show you the real survivors or the real victims. It’s very WW2 flamethrowers and Vietnam napalm like. That is not an exaggeration.’