Search for the missing proves tough

SANTA ROSA (Cal i fornia): Searches for the missing amid California’s storm of wildfires have been marked mostly by confusion.

Even establishing a decent estimate of the unaccounted-for has proved too difficult, with authorities citing wildly disparate figures within a single day on Wednesday, though all were in the hundreds.

Some of the missing are only struggling to reach loved ones because of communication problems. Others have been counted twice, inflating the numbers.

“We get calls and people search- ing for lost folks and they’re not lost, they’re just staying with somebody and we don’t know where,” said Napa County Supervisor Brad Wagenknecht.

But authorities say others will almost certainly be added to the death toll, now at 23.

Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano said his investigators were beginning to work the missing-persons cases one at a time, but they’re limited to looking in the “cold zones” they could reach.

With many fires still raging out of control, authorities said locating the missing was not their top priority.

“We can only get so many places and we have only so many people to work on so many things,” he said.

“When you are working on evacuations, those are our first priority in resources.”

As a result, friends and relatives turned to social media, posting pleas such as “Looking for my Grandpa Robert”, “We are looking for our mother Norma” or “I can’t find my mum”. It is an increasingly familiar practice that was seen after Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and the Las Vegas massacre.

Frances Dinkelspiel, a journalist in Berkeley, turned to social media for help finding her stepbrother Jim Conley after tweeting authorities and getting little help. But it was a round of telephone calls that ultimately led her to him.

A Santa Rosa hospital initially said it had no record of him, but when the family tried again, it was told he had been transferred elsewhere with serious burns.

It was a frustrating experience, Dinkelspiel said, but “I’m glad he’s in a hospital and isn’t lying injured on the side of the road”. — AP