The president of the republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said this Saturday that “there is no news of Portuguese nationals” among those killed in wildfires in Hawaii. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it had not yet received any requests for support.

“There is no news about Portuguese nationals. (…) Apparently there is no Portuguese name in the lists available,” Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa told journalists in Faro ahead of the match between Portugal and the US, in preparation for the rugby France2023. world cup.

The President of the Republic explained that he had spoken with the Secretary of State for Portuguese Communities, Paulo Cafôfo, and that he had received information from the Consul General in San Francisco, Pedro Pinto.

“In the available lists apparently there is no Portuguese name, but there is a sense that among the disappeared there are some descendants of those distant generations” of Portuguese who emigrated to that archipelago, he admitted.

MNE has not received a request

The Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MNE) reported earlier in the evening that it has so far not “registered” any request for support from citizens with dual citizenship or Portuguese descendants in Hawaii.

“There are about 30 national citizens, registered with the Consulate General of San Francisco, residing in Hawaii. The Portuguese community, with dual citizenship, is estimated to be about 200” people the ministry mentions in a note to Lusa.

But he guarantees that so far there are “no requests for support” from citizens of Portuguese nationality.

The MNE also clarifies that the community with Portuguese heritage, “estimated at about 100,000 people”, is formed by descendants of the migration wave of the late 19th century who do not have Portuguese nationality.

However, he admits that the list of people who disappeared in the fires in Hawaii, which has already been released, “includes Portuguese names of non-citizen families of Portuguese descent”.

However, the ministry led by João Gomes Cravinho emphasizes that it continues to “monitor the situation in Hawaii” through the Consulate General of Portugal in San Francisco.

The State Department had already confirmed that Portuguese descendants are missing after the wildfires in Hawaii, which killed at least 80 people.

“So much for the government [local] has not yet published the lists of fatalities, but there is knowledge of missing members of families of Portuguese descent,” the Foreign Ministry said in a response to Lusa.

At least 80 people have died in the fires that hit the US island of Maui in the Hawaiian archipelago, according to the most recent balance released today by local authorities.

The Portuguese government also ensured at the time that it was monitoring the situation through the Consulate General of Portugal in San Francisco, as well as being in contact with the leaders of the Portuguese community in Hawaii.

About 1,418 people were taken to shelters, according to Maui County officials.

The fires are the deadliest and most destructive of Hawaii’s disasters since the 1960 “tsunami,” which killed 61 people.

In fact, these fires are the deadliest in the US since 2018, at Camp Fire, California, which left 85 dead and destroyed the city of Paradise.

The fire hazard of the city of Lahaina was well known. Maui County’s mitigation plan, updated in 2020, found that Lahaina and other communities in western Maui burn regularly and that a large number of buildings are at risk of fire damage.