About 46,000 residents and visitors have flown out of Kahului Airport in West Maui since the devastation in Lahaina became clear on Wednesday, the Hawaii Tourism Authority says.

“In the weeks ahead, the collective resources and attention of the federal, state and county government, the West Maui community, and the travel industry must be focused on the recovery of residents who were forced to evacuate their homes and businesses,” the agency said in a statement.

Governor Josh Green said 500 hotels rooms would be made available for locals who have been displaced. An additional 500 hotel rooms will be set aside for workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

As the death toll around Lahaina climbed to 93, authorities warned the effort to find and identify the dead was still in its early stages. The blaze is already the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century.

Crews with cadaver dogs had covered just three per cent of the search area, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said.

He spoke as federal emergency workers picked through the ashen moonscape left by the fire that razed the centuries-old town of Lahaina.Teams marked the ruins of homes with a bright orange “X” to indicate an initial search, and “HR” when they found human remains.

During the search efforts, the barks of cadaver dogs alerting their handlers to potential remains echoed over the hot, colourless landscape.

“It will certainly be the worst natural disaster that Hawaii ever faced,” Green said as he toured the devastation on historic Front Street.

“We can only wait and support those who are living. Our focus now is to reunite people when we can and get them housing and get them health care, and then turn to rebuilding.”

At least 2200 buildings were damaged or destroyed in West Maui, Green said, nearly all of them residential.

Across the island, damage was estimated at close to $US6 billion ($A9.2 billion).

At least two other fires have been burning on Maui: in south Maui’s Kihei area and in the mountainous, inland communities known as Upcountry. No fatalities have been reported from those blazes.

As many as 4500 people were in need of shelter, county officials said on Facebook, citing figures from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Pacific Disaster Center.

The latest death toll surpassed that of the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California, which left 85 dead and destroyed the town of Paradise.

The cause of the wildfires is under investigation.The fires are Hawaii’s deadliest natural disaster in decades, surpassing a 1960 tsunami that killed 61 people.

Fuelled by a dry summer and strong winds from a passing hurricane, the wildfires on Maui raced through parched brush covering the island.The most serious blaze swept into Lahaina on Tuesday and destroyed nearly every building in the town of 13,000, leaving a grid of grey rubble wedged between the blue ocean and lush green slopes.

-with AAP