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As residents begin to return to what is left of their homes following the devastating wildfires in Maui, health officials in Hawaii are warning them about the dangers they face.
The Hawaii Department of Health advises people returning to the areas torched by the fires to wear the proper protective clothing, such as face masks, goggles, gloves, long-sleeve shirts, pants, and closed-toed shoes.
When choosing a mask, officials said that N95 masks are ideal to help protect you from breathing in cancer-causing particles that could be in the ash and dust.
"Ash may cause irritation of the skin, nose, and throat and may cause coughing. Ash and dust (particularly from burned buildings) may contain toxic and cancer-causing chemicals, including asbestos, arsenic, and lead," the Health Department wrote.
Health officials warned that some of those chemicals could stick around long after the fires are gone.
"Things like lead and asbestos are sort of top of the list. Those are things that are in paint, in buildings, and then do not really get destroyed with burning, so they're now in the ash and the dust," Diana Felton, Hawaii's state toxicologist, told NBC News.
As of Tuesday (August 15), authorities have confirmed that 99 people have died from the fires. Officials expect the death toll to double over the week. Search and rescue teams are slowly making progress. As of Monday, teams had searched around 25% of the fire area. Officials hope the teams can cover about 90% of the fire areas by the weekend.