California wildfires death toll rises to 25

PARADISE, Calif.: The air thick with smoke

People surveyed the damage and struggled to cope with what they had lost. Entire neighborhoods were leveled and the business district was destroyed by a blaze that threatened to explode again with the same fury that largely incinerated the foothill town.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said Saturday 14 additional bodies were found, bringing the death toll to 23. The victims have not been

- fornia, bringing the total number of fatalities for the state to 25.

The fire became California’s third deadliest since record-keeping began, with the death toll surpassing that from a blaze last year that ravaged the city of Santa Rosa.

An additional search and recovery team on top of the four already on the ground was being brought in to search for remains, Honea said. An anthropology team from California State University, Chico was helping with that effort, he said.

outstanding reports of missing people, Honea said.

In some cases, investigators have only been able to recover bones and bone fragments, he said. He encouraged family members of the missing to submit DNA samples that could be compared with remains that are recovered.

“This weighs heavy on all of us,” he said. “Myself and especially those staff members who are out there doing what is important

Honea add- he’s hope- more of

ed that ful that those missing people will be found. The department initially had more than 500 calls about citizens who were unable to reach loved ones.

But they have been able to help locate many, he said.

than 6,700 buildings, almost all of them homes, making it Cali-

since record-keeping began. There were 35 people still missing.

area Saturday, with wind gusts of up to 50 miles per hour expected, raising the risk of conditions simi- they saw nothing was left.

Jan MacGregor, 81, got back to his small two-bedroom home in Paradise with the help of his firefighter grandson. He found his home leveled — a large metal safe and some pipe work from his septic system the only recognizable traces. The safe was punctured with bullet holes from guns inside that went off in the scorching heat.

He has lived in Paradise for nearly 80 years, moving there in 1939 when he said the town had just 3,000 people and was nick-