A professional photographer who accompanied firefighters still battling the blazes on Maui said they have been "working around the clock" to keep the fires at bay.
"These guys have been working around the clock since Tuesday, you know, fighting these fires. A lot of them haven't slept," Daniel Sullivan told CNN.
Helicopters were dropping "hundreds of gallons of water, just trying to stay on top of it," he said.
"The winds are the real enemy up there, and luckily we had a couple calm days, which was good. So that kind of helped them to get on top of the fires. But these are big forest fires. This isn't something we're used to. And when these trees are so hot, what happens is, roots burn underneath," Sullivan said.
"Under the ground, those roots are burning, and then it can just jump up anywhere. And you have these fires that would start, and you would think there's no fire there, but when you take the temperature of the soil, it's 180, 200 degrees in the soil because those roots are burning," he said.
Firefighters continue to battle three separate fires. The Lahaina fire that has claimed the lives of at least 80 people is 85% contained, the County of Maui said on Friday. Additionally, the Pulehu fire, southeast of Lahaina near Kihei, is 80% contained, the county said in a Facebook post around 3 p.m. local time (9 p.m. ET) Friday. And the fire in Upcountry Maui, the hilly center of the island where firefighters have struggled to access flames in ravines, is now 50% contained.
Sullivan said he grew up in New Orleans and compared what he is seeing on Maui to what the Louisiana city looked like after Hurricane Katrina hit. "lt's like Katrina, you know, it's wiped out. There's nothing left," he added.
