Paradise, California - Search teams have
recovered remains of 42 people killed by a fierce wildfire that
largely incinerated the town of Paradise in northern California,
marking the greatest loss of life from a wild land blaze in
state history, authorities said on Monday.
The latest death toll, up from 29 tallied over the weekend,
was announced by Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea at an evening
news conference in the nearby city of Chico after authorities
found the bodies of 13 more victims of the devastating blaze
dubbed the Camp Fire.
The fire already ranked as the most destructive on record in
California in terms of property losses, having consumed more
than 7,100 homes and other structures since igniting on Thursday
in Butte County's Sierra foothills, about 175 miles (280 km)
north of San Francisco.
Honea said 228 people were officially listed as missing in
the disaster, but added that his office had received requests to
check on the wellbeing of more than 1,500 people who had not
been heard from by loved ones. Of those cases, 231 individuals
had turned up safe, he said.
Authorities made clear, however, that they are bracing for
the number of fatalities to climb.
In addition to 13 coroner-led recovery teams working in the
fire zone, 150 search-and-recovery personnel were due to arrive
on Tuesday, Honea said.
The sheriff said he also has requested three portable morgue
teams from the US military, a "disaster mortuary" crew and an
unspecified number of cadaver dog units to assist in the search
for human remains. Three groups of forensic anthropologists were
also called in to help, he said.
The bulk of the destruction and loss of life occurred in and
around the town of Paradise, where flames reduced most of the
buildings to ash and rubble on Thursday night, just hours after
the blaze erupted. Some 52,000 people remained under evacuation
orders, the sheriff said.
The 42 confirmed fatalities marked the highest death toll in
history from a single California wildfire, Honea said, far
surpassing the previous record of 29 lives lost in 1933 from the
Griffith Park blaze in Los Angeles.
Authorities reported two more people perished over the
weekend in a separate blaze, dubbed the Woolsey Fire, that has
destroyed 435 structures and displaced some 200,000 people in
the mountains and foothills near Southern California's Malibu
coast, west of Los Angeles.
President Donald Trump, who drew criticism over the weekend
for erroneously blaming the fires on "gross mismanagement" of
forests, approved California Governor Jerry Brown's request for
a major disaster declaration on Monday. The measure hastens
availability of federal emergency aid to fire-stricken regions
of the state.
The fires have spread with an erratic intensity that has
strained firefighting resources while catching many residents by
surprise.
The bodies of some of the Camp Fire victims were found in
burned-out wreckage of vehicles that were overrun by walls of
fire as evacuees tried to flee, only to be trapped in deadly
knots of traffic gridlock on Thursday night.
"It was very scary," Mayor Jody Jones recounted of her
family's own harrowing escape from their home as fire raged all
around them.
"It took a long time to get out. There was fire on both
sides of the car. You could feel the heat coming in through the
car," she told CNN. Jones said her family is now living in their
mobile home parked in a vacant lot.
More than 15,000 structures were threatened by the Camp Fire
on Monday in an area so thick with smoke that visibility was
reduced in some places to less than half a mile.
A view of homes destroyed by the Camp Fire is seen in Paradise, California. Picture: Stephen Lam/Reuters
Perilous winds that stoked the fire through drought-parched
brush and chaparral abated on Saturday, giving firefighters a
chance to gain some ground against the flames.
High winds returned on Sunday but fell again Monday morning,
with crews managing to carve containment lines around 30 percent
of the Camp Fire perimeter, an area encompassing 117,000 acres
of scorched, smoldering terrain.
The Woolsey Fire has blackened nearly 94,000 acres and was
also 30 percent contained as of Monday night, according to the
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).
Winds of up to 40 miles per hour (64 km per hour) were
expected to continue in Southern California through Tuesday,
heightening the risk of fresh blazes ignited by scattered
embers. CalFire said 57,000 structures were still in harm's way
from the Woolsey Fire.
Forecasts called for winds to pick up again Monday night in
Butte County, though with less force than previous days,
National Weather Service meteorologist Aviva Braun told
reporters.
Nearly 9,000 firefighters, many from out of state, were
battling to suppress the Camp Fire, the Woolsey Fire and a
handful of smaller Southern California blazes, backed by
squadrons of water-dropping helicopters and airplane tankers.
Some evacuees in Malibu, a seaside community whose residents
include a number of Hollywood celebrities, were allowed to
return home but were left without power or cellphone service.
California has endured two of the worst wildfire seasons in
its history over the past couple of years, a situation experts
attribute in large part to prolonged drought across much of the
Western United States.
Forty-six people died in a flurry of wind-driven wildfires
that swept northern California's wine country in October of last
year, destroying some 8,900 homes and other structures. The
worst of those blazes, dubbed the Tubbs Fire, was blamed for 22
of the deaths.