Wildfires may be responsible for raising local deaths by about 67 percent in a given month, a new study has found.

Scientists linked 82 “excess deaths” to the devastating blazes that struck Maui, Hawaii, in August 2023 — or two-thirds more fatalities than they would have otherwise expected for that month, per the study, published on Friday in Frontiers in Climate.

During the most intense week of the infernal event, the death toll was 367 percent greater than they would have anticipated for that period, the researchers observed.

“Wildfires can cause a measurable, population-wide increase in mortality, beyond what is captured in official fatality counts,” co-lead author Michelle Nakatsuka, of New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, said in a statement.

“This suggests the true toll of the Lahaina wildfire was even broader than........

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