200,000 flee California’s worst-ever fires
Blazes kill at least 25 and wipes out small town as Trump blames state
MALIBOU LAKE, CALIF.— A growing trio of wildfires incinerated large swaths of Northern and Southern California over the past three days, killing at least 25 people, displacing hundreds of thousands and turning a retirement community called Paradise into acres of ash and charred foundations. The massive Camp Fire north of Sacramento had destroyed some 6,700 structures, becoming the most destructive inferno in a state with a long and calamitous history of fires.
Since Thursday, more than 200,000 Californians have been displaced — greater than the population of the city of Orlando, Florida. In addition to the dead, dozens have been reported missing. Authorities warned that the property losses would also be staggering. A pair of fires near Los Angeles threatened Malibu mansions and destroyed Paramount Ranch, the filming location of the HBO series Westworld.
Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea says investigators discovered 14 additional bodies Saturday. And two more were found dead in a wildfire in Southern California, bringing the total number of fatalities for the state to 25. The fires have become the third-deadliest in California history.
Before officials announced the latest grim statistics and rising death toll on Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump fanned an ongoing dispute with California leaders, blaming mismanagement of state resources for the destruction and death.
“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning. “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”
California officials have countered Trump’s claims in the past, saying that ever-intense fires are the result of global warming, which dries up vegetation and turns fire-prone areas of the state into a tinderbox.
Saturday morning was the first time Trump has spoken publicly about the blazes.
In Northern California’s Butte County, about 145 kilometres north of state capital Sacramento, residents described fleeing a catastrophic fire that began on Thursday. The inferno grew with incredible speed, claimed nine lives and turned a sunny day into an end-of-days scene of flames, smoke, sparks and wide destruction. Named after nearby Camp Creek, the blaze is not yet done. It had burned at least 36,000 hectares, more than 360 square kilometres, and was only 20 per cent contained by Saturday, causing officials to declare a state of emergency for a fire likely to worsen over the weekend.
Officials warned “red flag” conditions would persist through Monday, hot, dry and windy weather that makes the land ripe for a fire’s spread.
Sherriff Honea told reporters at a news conference Friday evening that officials had found nine people who had been killed by the fire: Four were found dead in their cars in Paradise, down from the five officials had spoken about earlier; three outside of houses; and two others, one inside a home, and another near a car.
The fire had injured an undisclosed number of residents as well as three firefighters. And Honea’s deputies were still looking into 35 reports of missing people.
“This event was the worstcase scenario,” Honea said. “It’s the event that we have feared for a long time.”
Trump has loudly and consistently blamed intensifying wildfires on poor resource management by California officials. In August, with fires growing to historic sizes in California, Trump tweeted that the state is “foolishly” diverting “vast amounts of water from the North,” blaming bad environmental laws for the summer’s deadly fires. Twice in October, Trump made similar threats because of what he alleged was poor forest management policy, The Washington Post wrote.
California officials’ response has been that the real culprit behind intensifying wildfires is climate change.
As The Washington Post’s Angela Fritz wrote in July, a hotter-than average summer and dry winter have “led to tinderdry vegetation,” in areas scorched by the Carr fire during Redding, California’s hottest July on record. “The energy release component, or how much fuel is available for the fire, is at the highest it has been around Redding since at least 1979,” Fritz wrote.
In Southern California’s Ventura County, still reeling from a mass shooting that left 12 people dead, more wildfires had broken out, forcing 100,000 people in Thousand Oaks, Malibu and other areas to flee their homes. The Woolsey Fire had burned 14,000 hectares, officials said, while the nearby Hill Fire had burned through 2,400.
On Saturday, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Chief John Benedict told The Associated Press that two people have been found dead in the fire zone of a Southern California blaze.
The deaths are the first from the pair of wildfires burning to the north and west of downtown Los Angeles.
But of all the areas struck by fires in the state so far, Paradise had fared the worst. Its main commercial street transformed into a smoking runway of de- struction. Officials said that 6,453 homes and 260 businesses had been destroyed, making the fire the most destructive in California’s history. The previous record holder, the Tubbs Fire in the state’s wine country, was just one year ago.
Marc Kessler, 55, a science teacher at a public middle school in Paradise, said the sky turned black soon after he arrived at work.
“It was raining black pieces of soot, coming down like a black snowstorm and starting fires everywhere,” he said in an interview. “Within minutes, the town was engulfed.”
Teachers were told by emergency workers to forgo seatbelt laws as they piled 200 or so students into their personal vehicles. Bus drivers drove through flames to help out, he said. One of his students pointed out what they thought was the moon in the darkened sky.
“I said, ‘That’s not the moon. That’s the sun,’ ” he recalled, his voice cracking. “There were times when you couldn’t see though the smoke.”