California fire death toll rises

America’s deadliest blaze in a century

CHICO, California: At least 63 people are now dead from a Northern California wildfire and officials say they have a missing persons list with 631 names on it in an ever-evolving accounting of the missing after the US’s deadliest wildfire in a century.

The large number of missing people probably includes some who fled the blaze and didn’t realise they had been reported missing, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said.

“The chaos that we were dealing with was extraordinary,” Honea said of the early crisis hours last week. “Now we’re trying to go back out and make sure we’re accounting for everyone.”

Some 52 000 people were displaced to shelters, the homes of friends and relatives, to motels and to a Walmart parking lot and an adjacent field in Chico, a dozen miles away from the ashes.

At the vast shelter parking lot, evacuees from California’s deadliest fire wonder if they still have homes, if their neighbours are still alive and where they will go when their place of refuge shuts down in a matter of days.

The Northern California fire that began a week earlier obliterated the town of Paradise.

On Thursday, Anna Goodnight of Paradise tried to make the best of it, sitting on an overturned shopping trolley in the parking lot and eating scrambled eggs while her husband drank a beer.

But then William Goodnight began to cry.

“We’re grateful. We’re better off than some. I’ve been holding it together for her,” he said, gesturing toward his wife. “I’m just breaking down finally.”

More than 75 tents had popped up in the space since Matthew Flanagan arrived last Friday.

“We call it Wally World,” Flanagan said, a riff off the store name. “When I first got here, there was nobody here. And now it’s just getting worse and worse and worse. There are more evacuees, more people running out of money for hotels.”

Word began to spread on Thursday that efforts were being made to phase out the camp by tomorrow by gradually removing donated clothing, food and toilets.

“The ultimate goal is to get these people out of tents, out of their cars and into warm shelter, into homes,” said Jessica Busick, who was among the first volunteers when she and her husband started serving free food from their food truck last week.

A Sunday closure “gives us enough time to maybe figure something out”, said Mike Robertson, an evacuee who arrived there on Monday with his wife and two daughters.

It’s unclear what will be done if people don’t leavetomorrow, but city officials don’t plan to kick them out, said Betsy Totten, a Chico spokesperson. Totten said volunteers, not the city, had decided to shut down the camp.

Walmart has added security to the location and is concerned about safety there, but it is not asking people to leave, spokesperson LeMia Jenkins said.

Some, like Batres’ family, had arrived after running out of money for a hotel. Others couldn’t find a room or weren’t allowed to stay at shelters with their dogs or pets.

Some evacuees helped sort immense piles of donations that have poured in. Racks of used clothes from sweaters to plaid flannel shirts and tables covered with neatly organised pairs of boots, sneakers and shoes competed for space with shopping trollies full of clothes, rubbish bags stuffed with other donations, boxes of books, stuffed animals – yellow, purple and green teddy bears and a menagerie of other fuzzy animals – sitting on the pavement.

Food trucks offered free meals and a cook flipped burgers on a grill. There were portable toilets, and some people used the Walmart restrooms. |