Toll rises in Calif. fires
Search for remains continues; about 200 people have been reported missing
The search for remains continues in Paradise.
PARADISE, Calif. — Search teams were scouring the devastated town of Paradise on Tuesday with the grim expectation of finding more bodies in the aftermath of the deadliest wildfire in California history.
Finding remains is a painstaking process that is often guided by cadaver dogs after an intense fire like the one that struck Paradise, where at least 48 people have been killed, 200 are still missing and much is reduced to ashes. Coroners and dozens of other searchers have fanned out across the area, and two portable morgues are waiting to collect the dead.
The Camp Fire, as the blaze that ripped through Paradise is known, is only about 30 percent contained and has burned 125,000 acres. It continues to rage in the hills and ravines east of the city of Chico.
It is also the most destructive wildfire in California history, with more than 7,700 structures destroyed, most of them homes.
Two other wildfires continue to burn in Southern California. Two people have died in the Woolsey Fire, which is burning west of Los Angeles and has swept through parts of Malibu. The fire is 35 percent contained and has charred more than 96,000 acres, but firefighters believed they were “getting the upper hand.”
A third fire, the Hill Fire in Ventura County, has been kept to about 4,500 acres and is 90 percent contained.
With winds gusting up to 86 mph in San Diego County on Tuesday and a red-flag fire warning in effect, a utility company turned off electric power in some areas, and at least five school districts canceled classes.
Around 25,000 customers in the county were without power, either from precautionary shutdowns or from losses caused by heavy winds.
Military veterans who have seen combat say the fire zones in California remind them of war zones, both in the way they look and in the way camaraderie develops in harm’s way.
Smoke still rose Tuesday from tree stumps in the forests that run through Paradise. Paradise had a population of 27,000 before the fire, including many retirees but also families with children seeking a reprieve from the costs that have made many California cities unaffordable.
The inferno that ravaged Paradise last week became the deadliest wildfire in the state’s modern history on Monday when officials said they had discovered the remains of 13 more people, bringing the death toll to 42.
Among the missing in Paradise are many older residents of the Ridgewood Mobile Home Park, a close-knit retirement community of 97 pastel-colored homes, where residents were so tightly bound that they ate together, took walks together and often prayed together, bowing their heads at the mailbox, or in the middle of the street, when they heard of another’s misfortune. Just 20 or so of those people have been accounted for by the park’s owner, Glen Fuller.
Fires continued to burn Tuesday in Southern California, where the Woolsey Fire had scorched more than 150 square miles, an area roughly the size of Denver, and was continuing to threaten homes in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.
The Los Angeles County fire chief, Daryl Osby, said he could find no record of a larger wildfire in his county’s history. Two people had died in the fire and about 435 structures had been destroyed.
Malibu remained under evacuation orders Tuesday morning, but other nearby cities were slowly reopening to residents.