Death toll rises to 23 in N. California wildfire
Residents return to rubble after inferno
PARADISE, Calif. — The air thick with smoke from a ferocious wildfire that was still burning homes Saturday, residents who stayed behind to try to save their property or who managed to get back to their neighborhoods in this Northern California town found cars incinerated and homes reduced to rubble.
People surveyed the damage and struggled to cope with what they had lost. Entire neighborhoods were leveled and the business district was destroyed by a blaze that threatened to explode again with the same fury that largely incinerated the foothill town.
Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said Saturday 14 additional bodies were found, bringing the death toll to 23. The victims have not been identified. Two people were found dead in a wildfire in Southern California, bringing the total number of fatalities for the state to 25.
The fire became California’s third deadliest since recordkeeping began, with the death toll surpassing that from a blaze last year that ravaged the city of Santa Rosa.
An additional search and recovery team on top of the four already on the ground was being brought in to search for remains, Honea said. An anthropology team from California State University, Chico was helping with that effort.
The sheriff’s office still has 110 outstanding reports of missing people, Honea said.
In some cases, investigators
have only been able to recover bones and bone fragments, he said. He encouraged family members of the missing to submit DNA samples that could be compared with remains that are recovered.
“This weighs heavy on all of us,” he said. “Myself and especially those staff members who are out there doing what is important work but certainly difficult work.”
Honea added that he’s hopeful that more of those missing people will be found. The department initially had more than 500 calls about citizens who were unable to reach loved ones.
But they have been able to help locate many, he said.
The flames burned down more than 6,700 buildings, almost all of them homes, making it California’s
most destructive wildfire since record-keeping began.
More firefighters headed to the area Saturday, with wind gusts of up to 50 miles per hour expected, raising the risk of conditions similar to those when the fire started Thursday, said Alex Hoon with the National Weather Service.
The blaze grew to 164 square miles, but crews made gains and it was partially contained, officials said. It has cost $8.1 million to fight so far, said Steve Kaufmann, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
People sidestepped metal that melted off cars and Jet-Skis and donned masks as they surveyed ravaged neighborhoods despite an evacuation order for all of Paradise,
a town of 27,000 founded in the 1800s. Some cried when they saw nothing was left.
Jan MacGregor, 81, got back to his small two-bedroom home in Paradise with the help of his firefighter grandson. He found his home leveled — a large metal safe and some pipe work from his septic system the only recognizable traces. The safe was punctured with bullet holes from guns inside that went off in the scorching heat.
He has lived in Paradise for nearly 80 years, moving there in 1939 when he said the town had just 3,000 people and was nicknamed Poverty Ridge. The fire was not a complete surprise, he said. “We knew Paradise was a prime target for forest fire over the years,” he said. “We’ve had ’em come right up
to the city limits — oh yeah — but nothing like this,” he said.
MacGregor said he probably would not rebuild: “I have nothing here to go back to.”
Homes and other buildings in Paradise were still burning, and fire crews were trying to extinguish those blazes, said Scott McLean, a captain with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Officials warned firefighters to wear their helmets and be careful of falling trees.
Abandoned, charred vehicles cluttered the main thoroughfare, evidence of the panicked evacuation as the wildfire tore through Thursday. The dead were found mostly inside their cars or outside vehicles and homes.
Five of the dead panicked when they couldn’t escape by car because their route was cut off by a wall of fire, said Gabriel Fallon, who rode out the blaze with his parents to care for the horses, cows and livestock on their 10-acre farm in Paradise.
The group turned the other way and dashed down the paved street until it turned into dirt and passed the Fallons’ farm, he said. One of the drivers stopped and asked Fallon if the direction they were going would lead them to safety. Fallon said he shook his head as the fire roared closer.
The motorists parked at the end of the road. On Saturday, the charred shells of the five cars remained where they had been parked.
Fallon went back to his property, where he, and his parents and their animals weathered the fire with a garden hose. The fire consumed their home, but left the barn intact. “I was scared as hell,” said Fallon, 42. “I didn’t know if I was going to die.”