Melted cars, charred bone, devastation in California
DOZENS DEAD, HUNDREDS MISSING IN CALIFORNIA INFERNOS
The dead were found in burned-out cars, in the smouldering ruins of their homes, or next to their vehicles, apparently overcome by smoke and flames before they could jump in behind the wheel and escape. In some cases, there were only charred fragments of bone, so small that coroner’s investigators used a wire basket to sift and sort them.
At least 42 people were confirmed dead and 6,453 homes destroyed in the wildfire that turned the Northern California town of Paradise and outlying areas into hell on earth, making it the deadliest blaze in state history.
The search for bodies continued Monday.
Nearly 230 people were unaccounted for by the sheriff’s reckoning, four days after the fire swept over the town of 27,000 and practically wiped it off the map with flames so fierce that they melted metal off cars. The dead were so badly burned that authorities brought in a mobile DNA lab and consulted forensic anthropologists for help in identifying them.
Survivors spoke of fleeing the “apocalyptic” fires as the soles of their shoes melted, while celebrities living near Malibu in Southern California found their multi-million dollars homes in ashes.
Nichole Jolly, 34, a nurse in Paradise, described how she was nearly killed driving away from the hospital.
Her truck was rammed into a ditch by another desperately fleeing vehicle, so she got out and approached another car but the door handles were melting, and her trousers caught on fire.
“I’m breathing in the hottest air I’ve ever been in,” she said.
“My throat is bloodied, I’m about to hit the ground but the bottom of my shoes were melting.
“I put my hand out in front of me and prayed to God, ‘Please, don’t let me die like this’.”
She was rescued by firefighters heading toward the blaze.
Susan Miller, 59, who fled the inferno in Paradise in a car with melting tires, said: “I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life.” Her daughter Amber Toney, who was also in the car, said: “How can God take a town away that’s called Paradise?”
Increasingly exhausted and dispirited, friends and relatives of the missing called hospitals, police, shelters and the coroner’s office in hopes of learning what became of their loved ones. Paradise was a popular retirement community, and about a quarter of the population was over 65.
Tad Teays awaited word on his 90-year-old dementia-stricken mother, who lived about a mile from him in Paradise.
And Barbara Hall tried in vain to find out whether her aunt and the woman’s husband, who are in their 80s and 90s, made it out of their home in a retirement community in town.
“Did they make it in their car? Did they get away? Did their car go over the edge of a mountain somewhere? I just don’t know,” said Hall.
Megan James, of Newfoundland, searched via Twitter from the other side of the continent for information about her aunt and uncle, whose house in Paradise burned down and whose vehicles were still there. On Monday, she asked on Twitter for someone to take over the posts, saying she is “so emotionally and mentally exhausted.”
“I need to sleep and cry,” James added. “Just PRAY. Please.”
The blaze was part of an outbreak of wildfires on both ends of the state. Together, they were blamed for 44 deaths, including two in celebrity-studded Malibu, where firefighters appeared to be gaining ground against a roughly 370-square-kilometre blaze that destroyed at least 370 structures, with hundreds more feared lost.
Some of the thousands of people forced from their homes by the blaze were allowed to return, and authorities reopened U.S. 101, a major freeway through the fire zone in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Malibu celebrities and mobile-home dwellers in nearby mountains were slowly learning whether their homes had been spared or reduced to ash.
Actor Gerard Butler posted a photograph of what remains of his house.
Miley Cyrus, Neil Young and Robin Thicke also lost their homes.
All told, more than 8,000 firefighters statewide were battling wildfires that scorched more than 840 square kilometres, the flames feeding on dry brush and driven by blowtorch winds.