PARADISE AFLAME
THE death toll in the wildfire that tore through a northern California community has risen to 23, with 35 people still missing.
Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said 14 bodies were found yesterday, three days after the fire broke out.
Some victims were found in cars and in houses, Sheriff Honea said.
He said an additional search and rescue team was being brought in to search for remains.
The fire has become the third-deadliest in California history.
Residents who stayed to try to save their properties or those who managed to return to their neighbourhoods in the town of Paradise found cars incinerated and homes reduced to rubble.
Neighbourhoods were levelled by a blaze that threatened to explode again with the same fury that largely incinerated the foothill town.
The flames razed more than 6700 buildings, most of them homes, making it California’s most destructive wildfire since record-keeping started.
Sheriff’s deputies recovered human remains from at least five homes as they went house-to-house in Paradise looking for the missing.
The blaze grew to 400sq km but crews made gains and it was partially contained, officials said.
People sidestepped metal that melted off cars and jet-skis, and donned masks as they surveyed ravaged neighbourhoods despite an evacuation order for all of Paradise, a town of 27,000. Some cried when they saw nothing was left.
Abandoned, charred vehicles cluttered the main thoroughfare, evidence of the panicked evacuation as the wildfire tore through Thursday.
The dead were found mostly inside their cars or outside vehicles and homes.
State officials put the total number of people forced from their homes by California’s fires at more than 200,000. Evacuation orders included the city of Malibu that is home to some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.