Hearses stand by as crews search for victims amid ruins

PARADISE, Calif. — With hearses standing by, crews stepped up the search for bodies in the smoking ruins of Paradise — and relatives desperately looked for more than 100 missing loved ones — as wildfires raged Sunday on both ends of the state.

The statewide death toll stood at 25 and appeared certain to rise.

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

By early afternoon, one of the two black hearses stationed in Paradise had picked up another set of remains.

People looking for friends or relatives called evacuation centers, hospitals, police and the coroner’s office.

Sol Bechtold drove from shelter to shelter looking for his mother, Joanne Caddy, a 75-year-old widow whose house burned down along with the rest of her neighborhood in Magalia, just north of Paradise. She lived alone and did not drive.

Bechtold posted a flyer on social media, pinned it to bulletin boards at shelters and showed her picture around to evacuees, asking if anyone recognized her. He ran across a few of Caddy’s neighbors, but they hadn’t seen her.

As he drove through the smoke and haze to yet another shelter, he said, “I’m also under a dark emotional cloud. Your mother’s somewhere and you don’t know where she’s at. You don’t know if she’s safe.”

He added: “I’ve got to stay positive. She’s a strong, smart woman.”

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 missing-persons call center to help connect people.

More than 8,000 firefighters in all battled three large wildfires burning across nearly 400 square miles in Northern and Southern California, with out-of-state crews continuing to arrive and gusty, blowtorch winds starting up again.

The worst of the blazes was in Northern California, where the number of people killed in that fire alone, at least 23, made it the third-deadliest on record in the state. Two people were also found dead in a wildfire in Southern California, where flames tore through Malibu mansions and working-class Los Angeles suburbs alike.

Noah Berger / Associated Press As the campfire burns nearby, a scorched car rests by gas pumps near Pulga, Calif., on Sunday.