Hawaii’s gov­er­nor warned that scores more peo­ple could be found dead fol­low­ing the Maui wild­fires as search crews go through neigh­bor­hoods where the flames gal­loped as fast as a mile a minute and fire­fight­ers strug­gled to con­tain the in­fer­no with what some of­fi­cials com­plained was a lim­it­ed wa­ter sup­ply.

The blazes that con­sumed most of the his­toric town of La­haina, are al­ready the dead­liest in the U.S. in more than a cen­tu­ry, with a death toll of at least 96. The cause was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“We are pre­pared for many trag­ic sto­ries,” Gov. Josh Green told “CBS Morn­ings” in a record­ed in­ter­view that was aired Mon­day. “They will find 10 to 20 peo­ple per day, prob­a­bly, un­til they fin­ish. And it’s prob­a­bly go­ing to take 10 days. It’s im­pos­si­ble to guess, re­al­ly.”

As cell­phone ser­vice has slow­ly been re­stored, the num­ber of peo­ple miss­ing dropped to about 1,300 from over 2,000, Green said.

Twen­ty ca­dav­er dogs and dozens of searchers are mak­ing their way through blocks re­duced to ash.

“Right now, they’re go­ing street by street, block by block be­tween cars, and soon they’ll start to en­ter build­ings,” Jeff Hick­man, di­rec­tor of pub­lic af­fairs for the Hawaii De­part­ment of De­fense, said Mon­day on NBC’s “To­day.”

Mean­while, some state of­fi­cials say there is a short­age of wa­ter avail­able for fire­fight­ers, and they blame a re­cent rul­ing by an en­vi­ron­men­tal court judge. It’s part of a long-run­ning bat­tle be­tween en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists and pri­vate com­pa­nies over the decades­long prac­tice of di­vert­ing wa­ter from East Maui streams that start­ed dur­ing Hawaii’s sug­ar plan­ta­tion past.

Else­where, evac­uees were ex­pect­ed to be­gin mov­ing in­to ho­tels Mon­day evening. Green said Sun­day that 500 ho­tel rooms were be­ing made avail­able for dis­placed lo­cals, and ad­di­tion­al 500 rooms will be set aside for work­ers from the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency who are aid­ing in the re­cov­ery.

In ad­di­tion, FE­MA has start­ed to pro­vide $700 to dis­placed res­i­dents to cov­er the cost of food, wa­ter, first aid and med­ical sup­plies, agency ad­min­is­tra­tor Deanne Criswell said Mon­day. The mon­ey is in ad­di­tion to what­ev­er amount res­i­dents qual­i­fy for to cov­er the loss of homes and per­son­al prop­er­ty.

“We’re not tak­ing any­thing off the ta­ble, and we’re go­ing to be very cre­ative in how we use our au­thor­i­ties to help build com­mu­ni­ties and help peo­ple find a place to stay for the longer term,” Criswell said. More than 3,000 peo­ple have reg­is­tered for fed­er­al as­sis­tance, ac­cord­ing to FE­MA, and that num­ber was ex­pect­ed to grow.

On the wa­ter-sup­ply is­sue, the deputy head of the U.S. Fire Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Tonya Hoover, said she did not have de­tails on the is­land’s cur­rent wa­ter sup­ply. She said the head of her agency has been meet­ing with fire­fight­ers, in­clud­ing one who was bad­ly hurt and hos­pi­tal­ized.

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion is seek­ing $12 bil­lion more for the gov­ern­ment’s dis­as­ter re­lief fund as part of its sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing re­quest to Con­gress.

The blaze that swept in­to cen­turies-old La­haina near­ly a week ago de­stroyed near­ly every build­ing in the town of 13,000. That fire has been 85% con­tained, ac­cord­ing to the coun­ty. An­oth­er blaze known as the Up­coun­try fire has been 60% con­tained, of­fi­cials said.

“There’s very lit­tle left there,” Green said of La­haina in a video up­date Sun­day, adding that “an es­ti­mat­ed val­ue of $5.6 bil­lion has gone away.”

Even where the fire has re­treat­ed, au­thor­i­ties have warned that tox­ic byprod­ucts may re­main, in­clud­ing in drink­ing wa­ter, af­ter the flames spewed poi­so­nous fumes. And many peo­ple sim­ply have no home to re­turn to.

The Red Cross said 575 evac­uees were spread across five shel­ters on Mon­day, in­clud­ing the War Memo­r­i­al Gym­na­si­um in Wailuku. Among the vis­i­tors was Oprah Win­frey, who told Hawaii News Now that she has de­liv­ered per­son­al hy­giene prod­ucts, tow­els and wa­ter in re­cent days.

Win­frey, a part-time Maui res­i­dent, warned that news crews will even­tu­al­ly de­part from the de­struc­tion, and the world will move on. But she said that “we’re all still go­ing to be here try­ing to fig­ure out what is the best way to re­build … I will be here for the long haul, do­ing what I can.”

As fire­fight­ers bat­tled the blazes, a flur­ry of court ac­tions were lodged last week over ac­cess to wa­ter. On Wednes­day morn­ing, Judge Jef­frey Crab­tree is­sued an or­der tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ing wa­ter caps he im­posed for 48 hours. He al­so au­tho­rized wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion as re­quest­ed by Maui fire of­fi­cials, the coun­ty or the state un­til fur­ther no­tice if the judge could not be reached.

But that wasn’t enough for at­tor­neys with the state at­tor­ney gen­er­al’s of­fice, which lat­er filed a pe­ti­tion with the state Supreme Court blam­ing Crab­tree for a lack of wa­ter for fire­fight­ing. The state asked the Supreme Court not to let Crab­tree al­ter the amount of wa­ter to be di­vert­ed or to put a hold on his re­stric­tions un­til the pe­ti­tion is re­solved.

The judge “sub­sti­tut­ed his judg­ment for that of the agency,” the pe­ti­tion said, re­fer­ring to the Board of Land and Nat­ur­al Re­sources. “As a re­sult, there was not enough per­mit­ted wa­ter to the bat­tle the wild­fires.”

Wayne Tana­ka, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Sier­ra Club, said Mon­day that the at­tor­ney gen­er­al’s of­fice ex­ag­ger­at­ed the ef­fect of wa­ter di­ver­sion caps on fire­fight­ing.

“It’s a shame­less ex­ploita­tion of this hor­ri­ble tragedy,” he said. “The cen­tral Maui reser­voirs are of no use to west Maui, where most of the dev­as­ta­tion is on­go­ing.”

He said he’s con­cerned the state is will­ing to go to these lengths to ex­ploit the tragedy to help a pri­vate com­pa­ny mo­nop­o­lize wa­ter.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for for­mer sug­ar plan­ta­tion land own­er Alexan­der & Bald­win and the East Maui Ir­ri­ga­tion Com­pa­ny did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to an email seek­ing com­ment, nor did the at­tor­ney gen­er­al’s of­fice. A spokesper­son for the Board of Land and Nat­ur­al Re­sources said they do not com­ment on pend­ing lit­i­ga­tion.

Fu­eled by a dry sum­mer and strong winds from a pass­ing hur­ri­cane, the flames on Maui raced through parched brush. One fire moved as fast as a mile (1.6 kilo­me­ters) every minute, ac­cord­ing to Green.

“With those kinds of winds and 1,000-de­gree tem­per­a­tures, ul­ti­mate­ly all the pic­tures that you will see will be easy to un­der­stand,” the gov­er­nor said.