At least 53 people have been killed in the wildfires still raging on the Hawaiian island of Maui, and the death toll will likely continue to rise.

Authorities are still trying to locate and identify people who died in Lahaina when the fire raced through the town.

Maui Mayor Richard Bissen said locals can return home "as soon as we have recovered those who have perished".

Search and rescue operations were ongoing, Hawaii Governor Josh Green said in an update to the media, and officials expect it will become the state's deadliest natural disaster since a 1961 tsunami killed 61 people on the Big Island.

"We are heart-sick that there are more than the original 36 who have passed," Green said.

Search and rescue teams from California and Washington state, which are trained in disaster skills including using dogs to find human remains, have been deployed to Maui to assist with the process, officials said.

More than 1000 structures have been destroyed by fires that are still burning in Lahaina and surrounding areas.

Maui residents who made desperate escapes from oncoming flames, some on foot, asked why Hawaii’s famous emergency warning system didn’t alert them as fires raced toward their homes.

Hawaii emergency management records show no indication that warning sirens were triggered before a devastating wildfire killed at least 55 people and wiped out a historic town, officials confirmed Thursday.

Hawaii boasts what the state describes as the largest integrated outdoor all-hazard public safety warning system in the world, with about 400 sirens positioned across the island chain to alert people to various natural disasters and other threats. But many of Lahaina’s survivors said in interviews at evacuation centers that they didn’t hear any sirens and only realized they were in danger when they saw flames or heard explosions nearby.