Maui's top emergency officials were on another island when the wildfires begun, it emerged on Wednesday - and did not join a call about the response until five hours after the blazes broke out.

Dozens of senior bureaucrats were gathering on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, on August 8 for the annual meeting of FEMA coordinators in the Pacific region.

The first fire on Maui, the Upcounty Fire, broke out in the early hours of August 8.

Around 6:40am on that day, a school near Lahaina was evacuated, but an emergency response call was not held until nearly five hours later, at 11am.

The fire was declared 'contained' by 9am, CNN reported.

Yet by 3:30pm the fire had spread so significantly around Lahaina that an evacuation order was given for the town, and Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, Hawaii's acting governor, activated Hawaii's national guard.

The fire killed at least 115 people and more than 1,000 remain missing.

Herman Andaya, who led Maui's emergency response, was on Oahu when the fires broke out. He resigned last week, nine days after the fires, citing health reasons

Major General Kenneth Hara, (left), director of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HIEMA), and Don Aweau, (right), executive officer for HIEMA, were also on Oahu when the fires broke out

James Barros, administrator for Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, was among those at the Oahu gathering on August 8

A state emergency management spokesperson told Hawaii News Now the 'coordinating call about 11am' was held to discuss multiple wildfires that had sparked on the Big Island and Maui.

FEMA confirmed the fires were part of discussions during the conference, held at the Alohilani Beach Resort in Honolulu.

'There were consultations about the fires among local, state and FEMA participants,' said FEMA spokesperson John Mills.

It was unclear when the Maui officials made the decision to return home and deal with the disaster, or who was in charge when the fires broke out.

Those attending the conference included Herman Andaya, the then-director of Maui County Emergency Management Agency, who defended the decision not to activate emergency warnings.

Andaya resigned on August 17, nine days after the wildfires, citing his health.

It had emerged he had no background in disaster response: Local news site Maui Now reported in 2017 that he was hired over 40 other qualified applicants.

Also at the conference was Major General Kenneth Hara, director of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HIEMA); James Barros, administrator for HIEMA; and Don Aweau, executive officer for HIEMA.

Andaya, who leads Maui's response, was accompanied by at least six state emergency leaders, Hawaii News Now reported.

Two of them - Barros and Aweau - were at the state's Emergency Operations Center by 5pm on the day of the fires.

It is unclear when Andaya and Hara left the meeting.

Lahaina residents are seen on August 8 watching as their home town is engulfed in flames

At least 115 people have been killed from the fires and more than 1,000 people remain missing

The Lahaina fire is seen still raging on August 9

The fire destroyed Lahaina, and is pictured still smoldering on August 10 in Kihei

Maui's officials are facing mounting questions about their handling of the disaster, including why sirens were not activated and why no warning was given.

Emergency preparedness experts have been accused of complacency after it emerged they gave the risk of wildfires as low - despite significant damage caused by 2018 fires.

The cause of the blaze remains unclear, but a lawsuit has been filed against Hawaii's electric company, accusing them of failing to shut down their grid, despite hurricane tailwinds and tinder-dry conditions.

Officials in Hawaii on Tuesday implored residents to submit DNA samples to help in the identification of human remains, with the death toll currently at 115.

At the same time, investigators acknowledged it is possible not all of the remains of victims will ever be found.

Maui County prosecuting attorney Andrew Martin, tasked with heading up the family assistance center, said on Tuesday he spoke with experts who have handled DNA sampling in mass-casualty disasters elsewhere, and that he's 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.

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 total number of people killed by the fire would eventually be.

A fire sparked by a downed powerline on the morning of Tuesday, August 8 is believed to have developed into the conflagration which destroyed Lahaina. Officials initially brought the fire under control, but a flareup quickly spread

Maui Police Chief John Pelletier underscored that so far his department had 85 missing persons reports related to the fire on file - and asked citizens to report any missing family members or others directly to the police if possible.

The devastation was so bad, though, that Pelletier warned that even after all the searching for remains is over, 'I can't guarantee ... that we got everybody.'

Authorities say they have now searched 100 percent of the single-story residential properties in the disaster area, and are now moving on to businesses and tower blocks.

The catastrophe risk modeling business of Moody's said it estimates the economic loss from the Hawaiian wildfires to be in the range of $4 billion to $6 billion.

The company's Risk Management Solutions division, however, said in a report that most of the economic damage is expected to be covered by insurance, in the range of about 75 percent or more.

'Post-event loss amplification is expected to be high in this event due to the island effect on supply chains, high construction labor costs in general, inflationary impacts during the expected long recovery time, and potential ordinance and law requirements,' said Rajkiran Vojjala, vice president for modeling at Moody's RMS.