Grisly hunt for bodies as fires torch California

Search teams fanned out across the charred landscape of the town here, looking for human remains on Tuesday as authorities prepare for a rise in the death count from the state’s deadliest wildfire yet.

The Camp Fire blaze still raging in northern California has killed at least 42 people. Another 228 are listed as missing, Butte county sheriff Kory Honea said.

Two more people died in the separate Woolsey fire that has destroyed 435 structures and displaced about 200,000 people in the mountains and foothills near the Malibu coast, west of Los Angeles.

Camp Fire, already ranked as the most destructive on record in California in terms of property losses, has razed more than 7,100 homes and other structures since igniting on Thursday in the Sierra foothills, about 280km north of San Francisco.

A total of 150 search-andrecovery personnel were due to arrive on Tuesday, bolstering 13 coroner-led recovery teams in the fire zone, Honea said.

The sheriff said he also has requested three portable morgue teams from the US military, a “disaster mortuary” crew and an unspecified number of cadaver dog units to assist in the search for human remains.

Most of the destruction and loss of life occurred in and around the town of Paradise, where flames reduced most of the buildings to rubble on Thursday night, just hours after the blaze erupted. About 52,000 people remain under evacuation orders, the sheriff said.

Honea added that his office has received requests to check on the wellbeing of more than 1,500 people who had not been heard from by loved ones. Of those cases, 231 individuals had turned up safe, he said.

Authorities said on Monday evening they found the bodies of 13 more victims, increasing the death toll from 29 tallied at the weekend. The 42 confirmed fatalities marks the highest death toll in history from a single California wildfire, Honea said.

The bodies of some of the Camp Fire victims were found in the charred wreckage of vehicles that were overrun by walls of fire as evacuees tried to flee, only to be trapped in traffic gridlock on Thursday night.

More than 15,000 structures were threatened by the Camp Fire on Monday in an area so thick with smoke that visibility was reduced in some places to less than 1km.

Crews have managed to carve containment lines around 30% of the Camp Fire perimeter, an area encompassing 47,000ha of scorched terrain.

To the south, Woolsey Fire has blackened nearly 38,000ha and was also 30% contained as of Monday night, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.