DEADLIEST WILDFIRES
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has toured areas scorched by wildfires in northern California, as officials struggled to account for 1300 people still reported as missing.
“Nobody would have ever thought this would have happened,” Trump said while standing in front of burnt structures in Paradise, a community razed by the flames.
“This is very sad to see it. As far as the lives are concerned, nobody knows quite yet. We’re up to a certain number but we have a lot of people who aren’t accounted for,” he said.
The confirmed death toll for wildfires across the state stands at 76. The president surveyed damage caused by the Camp Fire, which broke out more than a week ago north of the state capital Sacramento.
Police said late Friday the number of people unaccounted for had jumped from 631 to 1011, but cautioned that the new count represented a provisional figure and might contain duplicates.
In the Woolsey Fire near Los Angeles, three people have been confirmed dead.
After Air Force One landed at a military base in haze-filled California, Trump boarded a Marine One helicopter and flew over the area before landing at Chico Municipal Airport, in fire-hit Butte County.
From there his motorcade made a 30-minute drive to Paradise, where he saw firsthand the ash and charred rubble of the neighbourhood.
He was joined by California Governor Jerry Brown, Governor-Elect Gavin Newsom and Brock Long, the head of the Federal Emergency Manage- ment Agency, among others.
Trump had drawn criticism for earlier comments he made on Twitter about the fires, blaming poor forest management for the “massive, deadly and costly forest fires” and threatening to withhold funding if the “gross mismanagement” was not remedied.
But while standing among the ruins of the Camp Fire, Trump said everyone was “on the same path.”
Trump then met with officials at a fire command centre in Chico, where he described what he had seen as “total devastation.”
The president, who has long expressed doubts about human-caused climate change, was asked by a reporter whether his views had changed in light of the fires. “No, no,” he said.
The Camp and Woolsey fires have destroyed more than 100,000 hectares of land and more than 10,000 residences and buildings, according to Cal Fire authorities. As of yester- day, the Camp Fire was only 55 per cent contained.
Meanwhile, San Francisco and other nearby towns and cities were shrouded in thick smoke. San Francisco authorities called the air “very unhealthy” and told people to remain indoors.
The Camp Fire has become California’s deadliest and most destructive, more than doubling the death toll of the 1933 Griffith Park blaze in Los Angeles County that killed 29.