New Maui Police Statement Reveals County Protocol Violations in Recovering Lahaina Fire Victims

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – After weeks of HNN Investigates asking questions, the Maui Police Department recently released information showing the department did not always follow county protocols while recovering the remains of people who died in the Lahaina fire.

However, the department insists the information it has given families is accurate.

This comes after MPD’s former morgue contractor told HNN Investigates the process was so badly handled he cannot guarantee that all the ashes families receive are their loved ones.

The Maui Police Department confirmed that identification numbers — used to keep track of who’s who — weren’t issued until after the victims had been moved at least two different times.

The department’s leadership also admits that photos of the scene and GPS coordinates were not obtained in all cases. They also recognize cases where body bags were not used to retrieve the deceased from their final resting place.

As of Oct. 3, HNN Investigates has questioned whether officers assigned to recover the remains of Lahaina fire victims followed proper protocols and procedures in accordance with Maui County’s Mass Casualty Operational Plan.

In a statement, a Maui Police Department spokesperson responded, “We used best practices from our federal partners who worked with us, especially the FEMA USAR teams.”

The statement went on to say, “We were also privileged to have the DOD team from the Department of Defense.”

According to MPD’s preliminary after-action report, FEMA urban search and recovery teams did not arrive on the island until the late afternoon of August 11, 2023—three days after the fire. By then, the vast majority of the 102 recoveries had already been made by MPD.

The same report states that there were approximately “90 recoveries made in the first three days.”

Meanwhile, records show the DOD team did not arrive “until mid-August.”

The The former mortuary department contractor told HNN Investigates of the alleged missteps it took place in the three days before the federal partners arrived from Maui.

Greyson Abarra is the owner and director of mortuary operations at Gray Tech LLC. For more than a decade, his company was contracted to provide post-mortem services for the Maui Police Department. The day after the fire, MPD leadership called Abarra to action.

He says that when he arrived at the Lahaina Civic Center on the morning of August 9, 2023, he was directed to a truck with the remains of six people in the back.

“The bodies were not in post-mortem bags (body bags),” he said.

Abarra went on to say, “we had to put them in proper post-mortem bags.”

HNN is investigating

While the department has not confirmed the numbers, it admits that officers did not always use body bags in the first phase of the recovery process, saying that “disaster bags were not yet available in sufficient quantity in Lahaina” and that “bodies discovered initially would be relocated from the area” to protect exposure remains and trespassers entering the burn area.

Abarra says many of the recovery processes and procedures essential to accurately document the location of a person’s death and keep those remains separate so they are not lost or confused with other sets of remains were not followed.

In addition to police officers, MPD now confirms that officer recruits, still in training, have been ordered to do the work – tasks that would normally be reserved for experienced recovery teams such as Gray Tech and anthropologists.

Abarra said, “A lot of that after-action report is about a lot of unified leadership and command, but it didn’t exist until later.”

According to the county’s Mass Casualty Operations Plan, at the time of discovery, each person who died was to be assigned a unique identification number; have photos and GPS coordinates taken of where they were found; and their remains placed in a post-mortem bag to be transported to the morgue for an autopsy.

Abarra said: “None of this information was available beforehand – prior to the retrieval and triage of these cases – which made it extremely difficult to sort through.”

Another major problem: Abarra said the deceased were not assigned a unique morgue identification number at the location where their remains were discovered.

He says the unique identifier is critical, especially in mass casualty events, because it allows accurate tracking and identification of victims so remains can be reunited with the correct family.

Records show the fire victims were moved at least twice before being assigned that identification number. First, they were first transported from where they were found to a centralized retrieval area. From there, they were taken to a forensic unit.

“I had to assign these unique ID numbers while taking pictures of the hospital,” Abarra said.

MPD confirmed Abarra’s claim, saying HNN Investigates the fire victims were not given a case number until they were x-rayed.

Abarra says there have been cases where photos of the scene were never obtained, adding some were not always helpful.

He also said that GPS coordinates were not recorded for each victim.

CONFERENCE STORIES:

Once officers started using post-mortem bags, he says they would find addresses or streets written on some of the bags instead of specific coordinates.

In an interview obtained as part of Attorney General’s Wildfire Inquiryan MPD detective described how the recovery process unfolded in the days immediately following the fire.

“I don’t know if I said it on the station or if I said it on the radio, but he came out and basically said, ‘Hey, if you find anything, call the location, the time, whether or not you think it’s a man or woman on the radio. So we can have a recording of that on the radio,’” said Det. Matt Bigoss.

“Then I said to the guys that were with me, “Hey, we’re going to put them — you know, recovery, body, remains, whatever, find it, put it in the bag. On the outside of the bag, write something indicating the date, time, location. Because at this point, we came to the conclusion – we basically had to get them back. And get them to a centralized location so it’s easier for the morgue people to pick them up.”

That detective went on to say, “I mean, there were some that were missed for sure. But for the most part, the boys were pretty good at taking pictures. And the documentation. And writing notes about what they saw.”

Abarra said: “Post-mortem rooms have a lot of humidity and condensation. And it also offered another challenge. If you don’t use something permanently, the markings on these bags could be lost.”

Abarra provided images showing examples of information written on some of the body bags, which were difficult to read because they were either smudged or erased.

These are some of the issues MPD touched on in its preliminary after-action report.

“Recommendation 20” was to “continue death investigation education for MPD officers, as some of the original documentation and photography could have provided more context with better coverage and detail.”

Abarra says he spoke up immediately, alerting department management to the problems. He says he even gave them a copy of Maui County’s Mass Casualty Operations Plan — a step-by-step guide on what needed to be done.

Asked about the county’s response, he said, “I don’t think the issue was understood.”

Abarra says he doesn’t blame the officers and enlisted officers for what happened, saying they were just doing what they were told to do.

“You should never have been put in this situation,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to go through this.”

MPD admitted that there were confusions. His preliminary after-action report states that “it was discovered early on that some body bags contained mixed remains. In other cases, a person may have been recovered in more than one body bag.”

The report went on to say, “A subset of fragmented bone remains could not be linked to a single individual and were mixed with several unrelated individuals and labeled as group remains.”

At the time of writing, those remains were being held at the morgue until the department could figure out what to do with them.

I asked MPD management where they are today. We’re told the remains are still in the ward’s care and are undergoing ongoing lab tests.

Below is the full statement from MPD that was sent to HNN Investigates: