Australian family's desperate search for missing great-grandfather in Hawaii
An Adelaide family is growing desperate in their search for their missing great-grandfather, feared dead in the destructive Hawaii wildfires.
Alfie Rawlings’ family have been trying to contact someone to help find him, but after an agonising five days, they still haven't received any news.
“What keeps me up at night is the fact that he was by himself and he was stuck in his wheelchair and he couldn’t get out,” Rawlings’ daughter Shirley McPherson told 7NEWS.
“That kind of drives me insane.”
Rawlings' lived in an assisted living complex in Hawaii, which McPherson said was one of the first to go up in flames.
“There’s nothing left of the apartment complex,” she said.
“It’s completely flattened, it’s just turned to ash, so I presume that he’s died.”
She said that the hardest part is not knowing, and all she wants is to find him - or his body,
“It’s the not knowing,” she said.
McPherson also added that she finds the images of strangers searching the ruins heartbreaking.
“You’re walking all over all the stuff, you think, ‘that could be my dad you’re stepping over’.”
McPherson still has hope that her father took shelter with others, but if her worst fears are confirmed, she would have to provide a DNA sample to see if it matches with any remains, a process that would take months.
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