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A crackdown on vapes could take longer than the federal government anticipated as it seeks to work with state and territory leaders to close multiple legal loopholes.

Health Minister Mark Butler insists the planned health campaign to address teenage vaping, announced as part of the May budget, has not been delayed.

Rather he's working with his state and territory counterparts to ensure a uniform approach to the issue.

But Mr Butler said there was not yet a timeframe for the crackdown to start.

Health ministers sought advice about whether the issue could be addressed through a single piece of Commonwealth legislation or would require all state and territory parliaments to legislate it, which would be a more complex and lengthy task.

A national working group is expected to provide advice to health ministers on the issue at a meeting this Wednesday.

"This is becoming a very serious public health crisis," Mr Butler told ABC Radio on Monday.

"We're determined to get the response right, but it is going to be difficult."

Mr Butler anticipated a "furious response" from the industry as there had been when governments sought to regulate nicotine and tobacco.

"This is also pretty new, and there aren't countries around the world that have taken as determined a response to vaping as I announced three months ago," he said.

"So a bit like plain packaging 10 years ago, we're really out there at the vanguard trying to take on this new public health menace."

The Lung Foundation says vaping is unsafe and potentially dangerous.

© AAP 2023

Hawaii officials have urged tourists to avoid travelling to Maui as hotels prepare to house evacuees on the island that faces a long recovery from the wildfire that demolished a historic town and killed more than 90 people.

About 46,000 residents and visitors have flown out of Kahului Airport in West Maui since the devastation in Lahaina became clear on Wednesday, the Hawaii Tourism Authority says.

"In the weeks ahead, the collective resources and attention of the federal, state and county government, the West Maui community, and the travel industry must be focused on the recovery of residents who were forced to evacuate their homes and businesses," the agency said in a statement.

Governor Josh Green said 500 hotels rooms would be made available for locals who have been displaced.

An additional 500 hotel rooms will be set aside for workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

As the death toll around Lahaina climbed to 93, authorities warned the effort to find and identify the dead was still in its early stages.

The blaze is already the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century.

Crews with cadaver dogs had covered just three per cent of the search area, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said.

He spoke as federal emergency workers picked through the ashen moonscape left by the fire that razed the centuries-old town of Lahaina.

Teams marked the ruins of homes with a bright orange "X" to indicate an initial search, and "HR" when they found human remains.

During the search efforts, the barks of cadaver dogs alerting their handlers to potential remains echoed over the hot, colourless landscape.

"It will certainly be the worst natural disaster that Hawaii ever faced," Green said as he toured the devastation on historic Front Street.

"We can only wait and support those who are living. Our focus now is to reunite people when we can and get them housing and get them health care, and then turn to rebuilding."

At least 2200 buildings were damaged or destroyed in West Maui, Green said, nearly all of them residential.

Across the island, damage was estimated at close to $US6 billion ($A9.2 billion).

At least two other fires have been burning on Maui: in south Maui's Kihei area and in the mountainous, inland communities known as Upcountry. No fatalities have been reported from those blazes.

As many as 4500 people were in need of shelter, county officials said on Facebook, citing figures from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Pacific Disaster Center.

The latest death toll surpassed that of the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California, which left 85 dead and destroyed the town of Paradise.

The cause of the wildfires is under investigation.

The fires are Hawaii's deadliest natural disaster in decades, surpassing a 1960 tsunami that killed 61 people.

Fuelled by a dry summer and strong winds from a passing hurricane, the wildfires on Maui raced through parched brush covering the island.

The most serious blaze swept into Lahaina on Tuesday and destroyed nearly every building in the town of 13,000, leaving a grid of grey rubble wedged between the blue ocean and lush green slopes.

© AP 2023

The death toll from the Maui wildfires has reached 93 as relatives of the missing frantically search for signs of their loved ones and survivors grapple with the scale of the disaster, seeking solace at church services.

Days after the inferno destroyed much of the historic resort town of Lahaina on Tuesday and Wednesday, crews of firefighters were still battling flare-ups, and cadaver dogs were sifting through the town's charred ruins in search of victims.

The death toll made the blaze Hawaii's worst natural disaster, surpassing a tsunami that killed 61 people in 1960, a year after Hawaii became a US state.

It was also the largest number of deaths from a US wildfire since 1918, when 453 people died in the Cloquet fire in Minnesota and Wisconsin, according to data from the National Fire Protection Association.

Many of the survivors took to Sunday church services, including Akanesi Vaa, 38, who said her family got stuck in traffic while trying to escape the flames.

Vaa, her husband and her children aged 15, 13 and nine resorted to fleeing on foot and jumping a fence to safety.

Along the way, an elderly woman pleading for help handed her a baby to care for. The woman and her husband were also able to make it over the fence.

"I think a lot of us needed to hear today's message," Vaa said after attending church at King's Cathedral in Kahului.

"All these ashes are going to turn into beauty. I know Lahaina will come back 10 times stronger."

Scott Landis, pastor at Keawal'i Church, a United Church of Christ congregation in Makena, said an unusually large crowd of 100 showed up, nearly double what he would have expected on a typical Sunday in August.

"They were really listening. You could tell people were here, looking for a word of hope," Landis said.

Among them were people who have family and friends unaccounted for, and they are "fearing the worst" he added.

Clinging to hopes of finding missing survivors, people sifted through a crowd-sourced online database listing thousands of names of individuals who had been found as well as of those who remained unaccounted for.

Family and friends mobilised on social media, sharing information about their missing loved ones, asking for help in locating them.

"Still searching for my in-laws," Heather Baylosis wrote in an Instagram post. "People are being found alive and severely disoriented due to what they have gone through. We are holding out hope!"

Hundreds of people were still missing, though a precise count remained unclear.

Hawaii Governor Josh Green again vowed to investigate the response to the blaze and the emergency notification systems after some residents questioned whether more could have been done to warn them.

Some witnesses said they had little warning, describing their terror as the blaze destroyed the town around them in what seemed to be a matter of minutes. Others dove into the Pacific Ocean to escape.

The cost to rebuild Lahaina was estimated at $US5.5 billion ($A8.5 billion), according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with more than 2200 structures damaged or destroyed and more than 850 hectares burned.

© AP 2023