Grim search continues in Paradise
The dead were found in burnedout cars, in the smoldering ruins of their homes, or next to their vehicles, apparently overcome by smoke and flames before they could jump in behind the wheel and escape. In some cases, there were only charred fragments of bone, so small that coroner’s investigators used a wire basket to sift and sort them.
At least 29 people were confirmed dead in the wildfire that turned the Northern California town of Paradise and outlying areas into hell on earth, equalling the deadliest blaze in state history, and the search for bodies continued yesterday.
Nearly 230 people were unaccounted for by the sheriff’s reckoning, four days after the fire swept over the town of 27,000 and practically wiped it off the map with flames so fierce that authorities brought in a mobile DNA lab and forensic anthropologists to help identify the dead.
Meanwhile, a landowner near where the blaze began, Betsy Ann Cowley, said she got an email from Pacific Gas & Electric Co. the day before the fire last week telling her that crews needed to come onto her property because the utility’s power lines were causing sparks. PG&E had no comment on the email, and state officials said the cause of the inferno was under investigation.
As the search for victims dragged on, friends and relatives of the missing called hospitals, police, shelters and the coroner’s office in hopes of learning what became of their loved ones. Paradise was a popular retirement community, and about a quarter of the population was over 65.
Tad Teays awaited word on his 90-year-old dementia-stricken mother. Darlina Duarte was desperate for information about her half-brother, a diabetic who was largely housebound because he had lost his legs. And Barbara Hall tried in vain to find out whether her aunt and the woman’s husband, who are in their 80s and 90s, made it out alive from their retirement community. ‘‘Did they make it in their car? Did they get away?
‘‘Did their car go over the edge of a mountain somewhere? I just don’t know,’’ said Hall, adding that the couple had only a landline and calls were not going through to it.
Megan James, of Newfoundland, Canada, searched via Twitter from the other side of the continent for information about her aunt and uncle, whose house in Paradise burned down and whose vehicles were still there. Yesterday, she asked on Twitter for someone to take over the posts, saying she is ‘‘so emotionally and mentally exhausted.’’
‘‘I need to sleep and cry,’’ James added. ‘‘Just PRAY. Please.’’
The blaze was part of an outbreak of wildfires on both ends of the state. Together, they were blamed for 31 deaths, including two in celebrity-studded Malibu in Southern California, where firefighters appeared to be gaining ground against a roughly 370-square-kilometre blaze that destroyed at least 370 structures, with hundreds more feared lost.
Some of the thousands of people forced from their homes by the blaze were allowed to return, and authorities reopened US 101, a major freeway through the fire zone in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Malibu celebrities and mobilehome dwellers in nearby mountains were slowly learning whether their homes had been spared or reduced to ash.
All told, more 8000 firefighters statewide were battling wildfires that scorched more than 840 square kilometres, the flames feeding on dry brush and driven by blowtorch winds.