Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Rain hinders California search
Craig Covey (left), a search team leader, and David Harper (center) talk to Stewart Nugent at his Paradise, Calif., home Friday. Covey and several team members took food to Nugent, who had stayed in his home and tried to fight the wildfires that destroyed much of the city. Covey was taking a break, saying rainfall was making conditions dangerous for searchers.
PARADISE, Calif. — Volunteers in hard hats, respirators and yellow rain pants had been poking through ash and debris looking for human remains in the wake of a Northern California wildfire, but a downpour Friday turned the ash into a thick paste, making it more difficult to find telltale fragments of bone and forcing them to temporarily stop their work.
Craig Covey, who leads a search team from Southern California’s Orange County, said those looking through the devastation in Paradise and two nearby communities were not told to stop but that he chose to take a break until the rain clears.
Heavy rain and strong winds were knocking over trees, raising the risk they could fall on searchers, he said.
“It’s just not worth it — we’re not saving lives right now, we’re recovering lives,” Covey said of the dangerous conditions.
The nation’s deadliest wildfire in the past century has killed at least 84 people, and more than 560 are still unaccounted for. Despite the inclement weather, more than 800 volunteers searched for remains on Thanksgiving and again Friday, two weeks after flames swept through the Sierra Nevada foothills, authorities said.
Covey’s team of about 30 had been working for several hours Friday morning before stopping and returning to a staging area with hot coffee and food under two blue tents. An electric heater provided warmth.
Two days of showers have complicated the search but also helped nearly extinguish the blaze, said Josh Bischof, operations chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Once the rain clears, state officials will be able to determine if the blaze is fully out, he said.
The Camp Fire ignited Nov. 8 and has destroyed nearly 19,000 buildings, most of them homes. That’s more than the worst eight fires in California’s history combined, the agency said, with thousands of people displaced.
Some of those displaced have sought shelter in a makeshift camp in a Walmart parking lot in Chico.
Walmart Inc. is looking to move the fire evacuees to nearby shelters as the Christmas shopping season begins. At one point, hundreds of evacuees were living in the makeshift community some have dubbed Wallywood.
The Bentonville retailer said in a Thanksgiving Day “Message to the Chico Community” that the American Red Cross will operate a shuttle service throughout the weekend to take evacuees from Wallywood to various indoor and outdoor shelters. The disaster relief agency will also transport evacuees’ personal belongings to a shelter via flatbed truck.
In addition, the statement said Walmart and the Walmart Foundation, which have already donated $500,000 in cash and products to the wildfire recovery effort, have committed another $100,000 “to ensure evacuees served at Red Cross shelters continue to receive important shelter services including warm beds, hot showers and nutritious meals as they wait for more permanent housing.”
The Chico Walmart closed at noon Thursday, and reopened at 6 a.m. Friday for the retailer’s Black Friday sale.
Separately, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is tasked with coordinating federal agencies in responding to a disaster, has so far issued fewer than 25 task orders for an estimated $1.5 million worth of assistance since the California wildfires were declared a major disaster on November 12, according to FEMA’s database of daily mission assignments.
That’s a far cry from the more than 140 orders FEMA issued in the first five days after Hurricane Florence was declared a major disaster on Sept. 14, which collectively were estimated to cost more than $200 million.
Experts estimate the fire could ultimately cause more than $7 billion in damages.
By contrast, Hurricane Florence, which flooded large swaths of North and South Carolina, has ultimately claimed more than 50 lives, and wreaked more than $20 billion worth of damage. Experts say that differential response is in part because the immediate response to a hurricane — with pre-positioned food and water and search and rescue teams deployed to help find survivors — is more predictable than for a fast-moving wildfire.
But the reduced role that FEMA has played so far in responding to the California wildfires doesn’t mean the federal disaster agency isn’t doing its job.
FEMA has begun its work providing relief to victims of the fire and establishing intake centers for processing requests from individuals whose homes were destroyed in the fire. It has already approved more than $9 million worth of requests.
“They helped us establish a bigger, broader recovery plan,” said Brad Alexander, a spokesman for California’s Office of Emergency Services. “We have been getting everything that we have asked of FEMA’s staff.”