Hawaiian Airlines CEO and President Peter Ingram said the airline is taking the evacuation process “day by day” and it’s unclear how many people still need to be evacuated from the tropical tourist hot spot. 

“We’ve really been treating it as how much capacity can we put in the air. We’ve added extra flights yesterday, we’ve got extra flights ready to go today, we’re going to operate that schedule and we’re prepared to have extra flights through the weekend,” he said on MSNBC on Friday. 

Weary travelers arriving at the airport and boarding flights to Honolulu have been “grateful,” he said.

“I think many of the guests who have arrived at the airport, particularly the people who arrived on buses from those affected areas, they’re just so relieved to get somewhere where’s there’s power, there’s running water, where they can get a bite to eat,” Ingram said. 

Ingram said in a statement Thursday that almost 500 employees call Maui home.

“I know our teammates are very worried about their community. Many of them have family members who have lost properties, close friends that they haven’t been able to get in touch with yet, but they’re really just trying to extend our Hawaiian hospitality to the guests that we know need to get on their way and get off of Maui and people are just really focused on taking care of that mission,” Ingram said. 

Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters Friday the White House is monitoring the catastrophe in Hawaii “closely.”

“We are coordinating federal resources to swiftly get there to support the work that has to be done both in terms of recovery, but to just support the folks on the ground,” she said. 

“It is tragic what has happened there. I have full faith and confidence in the leadership in Hawaii to stay on top of this, but they will have our full support,” Harris said. “Our prayers are with the families and with the leaders.”

She said she’d like to go to Hawaii to tour the damage, but doesn't want to distract from the needs of the victims and first responders.

"We want to, obviously, as with most of these situations, do whatever is in the best interest of the folks on the ground," Harris said.

Lahaina resident May Wedelin Lee said she’s “lucky to be alive” after she frantically evacuated her historic town, much of it now reduced to smoldering rubble. 

“I’m just lucky to get out of there when I did. It’s just the worst scenario possible times ten,” she said on NBC News Now. “It’s seeing everything you love, seeing your whole life just go up in flames, literally go up in flames, in front of you.”

She said she and her neighbors, who live in the heart of Lahaina, were watching the smoke for a couple of hours. It wasn’t until she saw a palm tree about 50 yards away catch fire that she realized she needed to escape. 

“It was minutes, it happened so fast. The smoke jumped, the fire jumped, explosions were happening,” she recalled. 

Thankfully, she was able to account for most people in her inner circle. Now, the survivors of Lahaina need supplies, food and, most importantly, a roof over their heads, she said.

“Lahaina is a very special community. We’ve been through a lot in these last few years and we’re close and I just pray that we can rebuild and that the focus can be us and not tourism, that it can be us," Lee said.

Dr. Reza Danesh, an emergency room doctor who responded to Lahaina this week, recalled the horrific stories survivors shared with him of swimming out to sea to escape flames engulfing Maui.

The fire spread in a matter of 30 seconds from block to block in the historic seaside town that was once the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, he said.

“That whole front street and that whole area just burned down and people ran into the water, they were jumping into the ocean, they were paddling out to sea," Danesh said on NBC's "TODAY" show Friday.

"This one girl said she held on to like some metal rod or something in the middle, like 30 yards out, for like seven hours until she was able to come back in. Her friend was hanging on with her and her friend didn’t survive. Kind of like a 'Titanic' story,” he said.

The Coast Guard said 14 people, including two children, who went into the ocean to escape the blazes and smoke Tuesday evening, were rescued.

Dr. Reza Danesh, who runs an urgent care center and mobile clinic, Modo Mobile, described the horror of seeing Lahaina after wildfires raged through, describing it as a “war zone.”

“I started getting text messages from some of the EMS people, paramedics and firefighters, that there’s bodies on the ground, like lots. And that was kind of disturbing. It was just kind of surreal,” he said on NBC’s “TODAY” show Friday. 

He said that when he first arrived with his mobile unit, parts of Lahaina were still on fire. 

“I could see trees burning, I could feel the smoke, I could feel the heat,” he said. “It was basically like another pandemic, to explain it. It was a ghost town, very apocalyptic.”

He said he found survivors, some in need of medical care, and others needing food and water.

Danesh said he was mentally ready for battle, armed with items for wound and burn care, but found that survivors needed much more.

"It was the people with chronic diseases that were going to become acute medical issues. People with seizure meds, diabetics, hypertension, people just didn’t have their medication,” he said.

Adding to the medical crisis, a pharmacy had burned down, there was no electricity, and no cellphone signal, he said.

Firefighters continue to work to contain fires in Lahaina, Pulehu/Kihei and Upcountry Maui and extinguish flare-ups, the county said in an update Friday at 2:45 a.m. local time (8:45 a.m. ET). 

The efforts to tame the blazes were bolstered by 21 firefighters from the Honolulu Fire Department, seven supervisory personnel and four vehicles. A Federal Emergency Management Agency search and rescue team with the Nevada Task Force arrived Thursday night with two K-9 cadaver dogs, the update said. 

Power and cellphone service are also slowly coming back. 

Power was stored to Upcountry water pumping stations early Friday, and “water will be restored after lines are flushed,” the county said. Meanwhile, officials said “some cellphone service was available in West Maui today.”

Around 10,900 people remain without power in Maui, according to PowerOutage.us as of 3:30 a.m. local time (9:30 a.m. ET).

Six emergency shelters remain open in Maui.

Food, water, supplies and clothing, as well as a limited supply of baby products, will be distributed to residents from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. local time Friday at the Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua. 

On Thursday, 14,900 visitors left Maui on flights, the county said in an update early Friday. 

American Airlines and United Airlines had flown empty planes to the island Thursday to aid in evacuating travelers whose plans were upended by the wildfires.

Earlier Thursday, tourism officials reported that more than 11,000 people had been evacuated. 

Mike Cicchino and his wife, Andreza, dove into the ocean to escape getting burned when flames engulfed their neighborhood this week.

“The current was pulling us out. You can’t see anything. At one point, we have fire on us and we don’t know where land is,” he said in an interview that aired Friday on NBC’s “TODAY” show. 

When they made it back to shore and looked for their dogs, they were met by the desperate cries of their neighbors. 

“It was like every 10 feet was ‘Help! Help!’ And I helped as many people as I possibly could but I couldn’t go any further, because there was just too much heat,” Cicchino said. 

Another couple, Sam and Josie Younger, said they escaped their beachfront home with seconds to spare when a blaze broke out.  

“It was unspeakable, unthinkable really, just seeing what was going on, all the destruction, all the people,” Younger told NBC News’ Dana Griffin, who is on the ground in Hawaii.

Despite the devastation on the island, Younger said, he's remains hopeful Maui will bounce back.

“It’s gonna take a lot of work and a lot of years and a lot of manpower but I have no doubt that it will bounce back.”

Questions have swirled on whether the siren system in Maui failed to properly warn residents to evacuate as wildfires rapidly spread in the island's west side.

Bissen said on NBC's "TODAY" show Friday: “I think this was an impossible situation.”

"The winds that hit us in on that side of the island … in some areas, gusts were up to 80 mph, some sustained between 45 and 60-65 mph. So, everything happened so quickly," he explained. "I can’t comment on whether or not the sirens sounded or not, but I know the fires came up so quickly and they spread so fast. There were some initially, when there was a smaller fire, homes were evacuated."

He noted that "many, many" people evacuated from their homes as 2,100 people were in shelters Tuesday night, not including many visitors in Kaanapali who sheltered in place in their hotels.

"Again, there was no power, there was no water. So that’s what we were dealing with," he added.

Hawaii Emergency Management records showed no indication that warning sirens were triggered before the fires erupted, officials said, and some Lahaina survivors said they didn’t hear any sirens, but fled when they saw flames or heard explosions, The Associated Press reported.