Tag Archives: Deadliest wildfire

Number of people believed missing in California wildfire drops to three

FILE PHOTO: Stanley Miniszewski Sr. uses a burnt golf club to look for a pair of expensive dentures in the remains of his RV after returning for the first time since the Camp Fire forced him to evacuate as his friend Merrill Jackson looks on at Pine Ridge Park in Paradise, California, U.S. November 22, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage/File Photo

(Reuters) – The number of people unaccounted for in California’s deadliest wildfire dropped to just three, down from a high of more than 1,200, officials said late on Monday.

The death toll from the so-called Camp Fire remains at 85, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office said.

The fire started in November 8 and was fully contained by November 25. It all but obliterated the mountain community of Paradise, home to more than 27,000 people about 175 miles north of San Francisco.

FILE PHOTO: Firefighters move debris while recovering human remains from a trailer home destroyed by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S., November 17, 2018. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

FILE PHOTO: Firefighters move debris while recovering human remains from a trailer home destroyed by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S., November 17, 2018. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

Of the dead, 50 have positively identified and 31 have been tentatively identified, officials said.

No human remains have been found since early December, but the search will continue, officials said.

The cause of the fire is still being investigated. The electricity utility PG&E Corp reported equipment problems near the origin of the fire around the time it began.

(Reporting by Rich McKay; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

California wildfire that killed at least 85 people fully contained

FILE PHOTO: Vanthy Bizzle hands some small religious figurines to her husband Brett Bizzle in the remains of their home after returning for the first time since the Camp Fire forced them to evacuate in Paradise, California, U.S. November 22, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage/File Photo

(Reuters) – The deadliest wildfire in California history that destroyed the mountain town of Paradise and killed at least 85 people was 100 percent contained on Sunday, according to state fire officials.

FILE PHOTO: The word "sorry" is spray painted on the edge of a property burned by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S. November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage

FILE PHOTO: The word “sorry” is spray painted on the edge of a property burned by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S. November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage

The number of people still missing from the Camp Fire north of San Francisco dropped to 249 on Sunday, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office said. The number was revised down from 475 as people who were believed missing were found in shelters, staying in hotels or with friends, officials said, adding that many did not know they were on the list.

The Camp Fire that started on Nov. 8 destroyed nearly 14,000 homes and burned nearly 154,000 acres (62,000 hectares) – an area five times the size of San Francisco.

Searchers will have a few more days of dry weather, but starting late Tuesday, another 2-5 inches (5 to 13 cm) of rain is expected to drop on the Sierra Nevada foothills through next Sunday, hampering the searchers work and renewing fears of flash floods and mudslides, forecasters said.

“The fear is that the rain will drop in intense bursts,” Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the federal Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said early Sunday.

“All the vegetation has burned away, and that’s a dangerous recipe for mudslides,” Hurley said.

Last week, 2-3 inches (5-8 cm) of rain fell there and turned ash from the thousands of destroyed homes into slurry, complicating the work of finding bodies reduced to bone fragments.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea has warned that remains of some victims may never be found.

The town of Paradise was a popular destination for retirees, with people aged 65 or older accounting for a quarter of its 27,000 residents. Most of the victims of the fire identified so far were of retirement age.

Investigators have yet to determine the cause of the fire.

Thousands of people forced to flee Paradise spent Thanksgiving in warehouses in the nearby city of Chico, or with friends or relatives in nearby towns.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; additional reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico, Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles and Gabriella Borter and Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Search grows for victims of California’s deadliest wildfire

A volunteer search and rescue crew from Calaveras County comb through a home destroyed by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S., November 13, 2018. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

By Terray Sylvester

PARADISE, Calif. (Reuters) – The search for remains of victims in the charred ruins of the northern California town of Paradise was set to expand on Wednesday, while firefighters stepped up efforts to contain the state’s deadliest-ever wildfire.

A National Guard contingent of 100 military police trained to seek and identify human remains will reinforce coroner-led recovery teams, cadaver dogs and forensic anthropologists already scouring the ghostly landscape, left by a fire that has killed at least 48 people.

Two hundred twenty-eight had been listed as missing, but on Tuesday night local county sheriff Kory Honea said those numbers were highly fluid as some individuals may simply have fallen out of touch during chaotic evacuations.

A Cal Fire firefighter walks between homes destroyed by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S., November 13, 2018. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

A Cal Fire firefighter walks between homes destroyed by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S., November 13, 2018. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

The grim search is concentrated in the little that is left of Paradise, a Sierra foothills town in Butte County, California, about 175 miles (280 km) north of San Francisco, that was overrun by flames and largely incinerated last Thursday.

The killer “Camp Fire,” fed by drought-desiccated scrub and fanned by strong winds, has capped a catastrophic California wildfire season that experts largely attribute to prolonged dry spells that are symptomatic of global climate change.

Wind-driven flames roared through Paradise so swiftly last week that residents were forced to flee for their lives with little or no warning.

Anna Dise, a resident of Butte Creek Canyon west of Paradise, told KRCR TV that her father, Gordon Dise, 66, was among those who died in the fire. They had little time to evacuate and their house collapsed on her father when he went back in to gather belongings.

Dise said she could not drive her car because the tires had melted. To survive, she hid overnight in a neighbor’s pond with her dogs.

Forensic investigators search a community swimming pool for victims of the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S., November 13, 2018. REUTERS/Noel Randewich

Forensic investigators search a community swimming pool for victims of the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S., November 13, 2018. REUTERS/Noel Randewich

“It (the fire) was so fast,” Dise said. “I didn’t expect it to move so fast.”

The Butte County disaster coincided with a flurry of blazes in Southern California, most notably the “Woolsey Fire,” which has killed two people, destroyed more than 400 structures and at its height displaced about 200,000 people in the mountains and foothills west of Los Angeles.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and California Governor Jerry Brown were scheduled on Wednesday to pay a visit to both of the sites, which President Donald Trump declared disaster areas, making federal emergency assistance more readily available.

The fatality count of 48 from the Camp Fire far exceeds the previous record for the greatest loss of life from a single wildfire in California history – 29 people killed by the Griffith Park fire in Los Angeles in 1933.

The origins of both fires are under investigation. Utility companies, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric reported to regulators they experienced problems with transmission lines or substations in areas around the time the blazes were first reported.

Aided by diminished winds and rising humidity levels, fire crews had managed by late Tuesday to carve containment lines around more than a third of both fires, easing further the immediate threat to life and property.

On one small section of the fire containment lines in Butte County that crews have been erecting around the Camp Fire, wind conditions were actually helping those efforts early Wednesday morning.

Speaking to KRCR TV early Wednesday in the Feather River Canyon to the northeast of Chico, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) official Josh Campbell said strong wind gusts in the canyon of up to 30 miles per hours (50 km) were actually helping local crews by slowing the spread of the fire.

“This gives us the opportunity to construct our lines, so we can be ready for the fire and put it out,” he said.

Butte County Sheriff Honea said in some cases victims were burned beyond recognition.

More than 50,000 people remain under evacuation orders.

(GRAPHIC: Deadly California fires, https://tmsnrt.rs/2Plpuui)

(Additional reporting by Noel Randewich and Sharon Bernstein in Paradise and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Writing by Steve Gorman; editing by David Stamp)