California wildfire death toll up to 31

PARADISE, Calif. — As relatives desperately searched shelters for missing loved ones, California crews stepped up the search for bodies in the smoking ruins of Paradise on Sunday, loading the remains of at least one victim into a hearse. Wildfires continued to rage on both ends of the state.

The statewide death toll stood at 31 and appeared certain to rise. More than 100 people were reported missing after the socalled Camp Fire ravaged a swath of Northern California.

At least five search teams were working in Paradise — a town of 27,000 that was largely incinerated on Thursday — and in surrounding communities. Authorities called in a mobile DNA lab and anthropologists to help identify victims of the most destructive wildfire in California history.

Officials and relatives held out hope that many of those unaccounted for were safe and simply had no cellphones or other ways to contact loved ones. The sheriff ’s office in the stricken northern county set up a missingpersons call center to help connect people.

Gov. Jerry Brown said California is requesting aid from the Trump administration. President Donald Trump has blamed “poor” forest management for the fires. Brown told a press briefing that federal and state governments must do more forest management but said that’s not the source of the problem.

“Managing all the forests in everywhere we can does not stop climate change,” Brown said. “And those who deny that are definitely contributing to the tragedies that we’re now witnessing, and will continue to witness in the coming years.”

The worst of the blazes was in Northern California, where the number of people killed in that fire alone, at least 29, matched the deadliest wildfire on record in the state. Two people were also found dead in a wildfire in Southern California, where flames tore through Malibu mansions and workingclass Los Angeles suburbs alike.

The two severely burned bodies were discovered in a driveway in Malibu, where residents forced from their homes included Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian West and Martin Sheen. Actor Gerard Butler said on Instagram that his Malibu home was “half-gone.”

Flames also besieged Thousand Oaks, the Southern California city in mourning over the massacre of 12 people in a shooting rampage at a country music bar Wednesday night.