Calif. under siege
Dozens left dead by fires as hundreds remain missing
SONOMA, Calif. — They are trying to find lost loved ones, to sift through the ashes of their homes, to count, identify and mourn the dozens of dead — all while the wildfires rage on.
Communities in Northern California prepared for another day under siege Friday, despite being driven to exhaustion by evacuations, destruction and danger in the deadliest week of wildfires the state has ever seen.
“It wears you out,” said winemaker Kristin Belair, who was driving back from Lake Tahoe to her as-yet-unburned home in Napa. “Anybody who’s been in a natural disaster can tell you that it goes on and on. I think you just kind of do hour by hour almost.”
The death toll had climbed to an unprecedented 31 and was expected to keep rising. Individual fires, including the Oakland Hills blaze of 1991, had killed more people than any one of the current blazes, but no collection of simultaneous fires in California had ever led to so many deaths, authorities said.
“We had series of statewide fires in 2003, 2007, 2008 that didn’t have anything close to this death count,” said Daniel Berlant, a deputy director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Hundreds more were injured or missing.
Real recovery would have to wait for firefighters to bring under control the 21 wildfires spanning more than 777 sq. km. Most were less than 10 per cent contained.
New evacuations were still being ordered for fires that broke out Sunday night.
“We are not even close to being out of this emergency,” said Mark Ghilarducci, director of the state’s Office of Emergency Services.
Choking smoke hung thick and then drifted over the San Francisco Bay Area, where masks to filter the fumes were becoming a regular uniform and the sunsets were bloodred from the haze.
“It’s acrid now,” said Wayne Petersen in Sonoma. “I’m wearing the mask because I’ve been here two or three days now, I live here. It’s starting to really affect my breathing and lungs so I’m wearing the mask. It’s helping.”
The fires drove hundreds of evacuees north to beaches, some sleeping on the sand on the first night of the blazes. Since then, authorities have brought tents and sleeping bags and opened public buildings and restaurants to house people seeking refuge in the safety and clean air of the coastal community of Bodega Bay, where temperatures drop dramatically at night.
“The kids were scared,” said Patricia Ginochio, who opened her seaside restaurant for some 300 people to sleep. “They were shivering and freezing.”
Meanwhile, teams with cadaver dogs began a grim search for more dead, resorting in some cases to serial numbers stamped on medical implants to identify remains in charred ruins. Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano said officials were still investigating hundreds of reports of missing people and that recovery teams would begin conducting “targeted searches” for specific residents at their last known addresses.
“We have found bodies almost completely intact, and we have found bodies that were nothing more than ash and bones,” said the sheriff.
Since igniting Sunday in spots across eight counties, the fires have transformed many neighbourhoods into wastelands. At least 3,500 homes and businesses have been destroyed and an estimated 25,000 people forced to flee.
Fire officials were investigating whether downed power lines or other utility failures could have sparked the fires.