At least 1,100 people are still missing two weeks after deadly wildfires hit the Hawaiian island of Maui, authorities have said, with the FBI seeking family members' help in identifying the remains of the dead.
The fires were the deadliest to hit the United States in a century, claiming at least 115 lives, according to the latest provisional death toll.
The tourist town of Lahaina, home to 12,000 people, was all but wiped off the map, with thousands of missing persons appearing on lists maintained by various organisations, including the police, Red Cross and shelters.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now working to collate and verify the data, Special Agent Steven Merrill told reporters yesterday.
"We're cross-referencing all the lists so that we can determine who in fact truly is still unaccounted for," Mr Merrill said.
Maui County prosecuting attorney Andrew Martin, tasked with heading up the family assistance centre, said that he has spoken with experts who have handled DNA sampling in mass-casualty disasters elsewhere, and that he is seeing less willingness in Hawaii.
"The number of family members who are coming in to provide DNA samples is a lot lower than they've seen in other disasters," he said.
Mr Martin said he could not explain why people seemed less willing to provide DNA samples - so far 104 had been collected.
But he hoped his reassurances that the DNA provided would only be used for the purpose of identifying remains, and would not be transferred to any law enforcement database or agency, would help more family members come forward.
Investigators said at the news conference that there remain between 1,000 and 1,100 names on their running list of people who are unaccounted for from the fire.
But they also said the list was a complex jumble that included some people identified by a single name, others with missing data like birth dates, some people whose genders were not clear and also that there were likely duplicate reports of the same people as the list is compiled from varied sources.
They gave no forecast on when - or if - they might ever finish the task of accounting for everybody on the list. They also said they could not yet give an estimate on what the tota lnumber of people killed by the fire would eventually be.
The FBI has set up a dedicated telephone hotline and has encouraged relatives of the missing to contact them.
"We really need the public's help", said Mr Merrill, particularly in terms of getting additional information to verify details for some of the missing.
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Maui police chief John Pelletier said authorities were refining the data and were hoping to publish a verified list of missing persons "in the next few days".
FBI agents have also been collecting DNA samples from the families of the missing who are unable to travel to Maui, wherever in the world they may be.
So far, only 27 of the 115 victims have been identified.
Having the DNA of the families of the missing "is a critical step in order to make an identification" of the victims, said Julie French, vice president of ANDE, the company in charge of these operations.
"Nearly three-quarters of remains that have been tested for DNA thus far have generated searchable DNA results," she said.
But without DNA from relatives against which to compare this data, the process is futile.
Authorities say they have now searched 100% of the single-story residential properties in the disaster area.
