Fresh wind fans deadly blaze
United States
Strong Santa Ana winds returned to Southern California yesterday, fanning a huge wildfire that has scorched a string of communities west of Los Angeles.
Huge plumes of smoke were rising again in the fire area, which stretches kilometres from the northwest corner of Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley to the Malibu coast.
Aircraft swooped low over flaming hills to drop lines of fire retardant as flames marched through brush lands on the edges of cul-de-sac communities.
A one-day lull in the dry, northeasterly winds ended at midmorning and authorities warned that the gusts would continue through Wednesday.
The lull allowed firefighters to gain 10 per cent control of the socalled Woolsey fire, which has burned more than 335 square kilometres in western Los Angeles County and southeastern Ventura County since Friday.
Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby stressed there were numerous hotspots and plenty of fuel that had not yet burned.
The count of destroyed homes remained at 177 but it was expected to increase. Osby noted that a November 1993 wildfire in Malibu destroyed more than 270 homes and said he would not be surprised if the total from the current fire would be higher. The death toll stood at two. The severely burned bodies were discovered in a long residential driveway on a stretch of Mulholland Highway in Malibu, where most of the surrounding structures had burned. The deaths remained under investigation.
The deaths came as authorities in Northern California announced the death toll from a massive wildfire there has reached 29 people, bringing the statewide total to 31.
Progress was made on the lines of smaller fire to the west in Ventura County, which was 70 per cent contained at about18 square kilometres, and evacuations were greatly reduced.
But thousands remained under evacuation orders due to the Woolsey fire. Three firefighters suffered unspecified injuries, authorities said.
Also injured was a well-known member of the Malibu City Council. Councilman Jefferson ‘‘Zuma Jay’’ Wagner was injured while trying to save his home, which burned down, Councilman Skylar Peak told reporters yesterday.
Peak said Wagner was hospitalised down the coast in Santa Monica and was expected to recover.
Wagner runs Zuma Jay Surfboards, a longtime fixture on Pacific Coast Highway near the landmark Malibu Pier.
The extensive celebrity community within Malibu wasn’t spared. Actor Gerard Butler and Camille Grammer Meyer of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills were among those whose homes were damaged or destroyed
In northern California, 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.
At least five search teams were working in Paradise — a town of 27,000 that was largely incinerated on Frisday – and 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.
The search also went on for the missing.
‘‘I still haven’t heard anything,’’ said Laurie Teague, who was looking for her 80-year-old stepfather, Herb Alderman. She and her brother called shelters, hospitals, the sheriff’s department and the coroner’s office.
‘‘He has friends in that area,’’ Teague said. ‘‘I’m hoping one of them grabbed him and took him to shelter.’’
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.
Sol Bechtold drove from shelter to shelter looking for his mother, Joanne Caddy, a 75-yearold 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. 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.’’