ON THE RISE
Calif. wildfire kills 23, becomes state’s third deadliest.
Already the most destructive wildfire in California history, the Camp Fire in the Sierra Nevada foothills has become the state’s third deadliest — killing 23 people in three days, with more than 100 people unaccounted for in a charred swath of land larger than Detroit.
The statewide death toll stood at 25 and appeared certain to rise.
At least five search teams were working in Paradise — a town of 27,000 that was largely incinerated on Thursday — 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.
Although the fire had been 25 percent contained by Sunday, high temperatures and gusty winds made the weather optimal for the Camp Fire to spread for at least another day.
As of Saturday, the Camp Fire had destroyed nearly 7,000 structures in and around the town of Paradise and has been blamed for most of the last week’s fire deaths. The wildfire is the deadliest in the state since 1991. In Southern California, two people were found dead in fires burning outside Los Angeles.
“This event was the worst-case scenario,” Butte County Sheriff Kory L. Honea said. “It’s the event that we have feared for a long time.”
Honea, who is also the county coroner, told the Associated Press that he had to add a fifth search-and-recovery team to help find bodies. Authorities have not released the names of victims and have continued to search for more.
His office has also ordered an additional DNA lab truck and received help from anthropologists at California State University, Chico for a time-consuming and daunting task: In some cases, investigators have found only pieces of bone.
The smoke, like orange fog, that enveloped Chico and surrounding towns Friday gave way to a low-lying haze that spread all the way up to Redding over the weekend, thanks to a shift in winds. As the fire moved on, displaced residents were allowed to return to whatever was left of their homes.
Gov. Jerry Brown, D, requested a federal disaster declaration, which would make the hardest-hit communities eligible for housing, unemployment and other support programs and allow state and local governments to repair or replace fire-damaged facilities and infrastructure. FEMA has already granted a state request for emergency aid.
President Donald Trump has alternated between offering sympathy for displaced people and firefighters, and lashing out at California’s leaders over what he deemed poor forest management.
“With proper Forest Management, we can stop the devastation constantly going on in California. Get Smart!” he tweeted Sunday morning, echoing a refrain that he has frequently leveled at California officials and threatening to withhold federal money.
Officials shot back that increasingly destructive fires are a result of global warming, which dries out vegetation and turns large swaths of grassland into a tinderbox.
A spokesman for Brown said that more federal forest land has burned than state land, adding that the state has expanded its forestry budget while the Trump administration has cut its budget for forest services.
Brian Rice, president of the California Professional Firefighters Association, chided Trump, calling his words “ill-informed, illtimed and demeaning to those who are suffering as well as the men and women on the front lines.”
State firefighters found their resources divided between a historic fire in the north and a pair of fires in the south.
Near Los Angeles, about 200,000 people were displaced by the Woolsey Fire, which began midafternoon Thursday near Simi Valley, even as fire departments were responding to a second wildfire, the Hill Fire, just west of Thousand Oaks.
The Woolsey Fire expanded to 35,000 acres in less than a day, racing from the Conejo Valley to the Pacific Ocean, across Highway 101 and the Santa Monica mountains, at speeds that shocked veteran fire officials.
Authorities said two bodies were found, both burned, in Malibu in a vehicle that had been in the path of the wildfire.
Fire crews, including many from out of state, were deployed throughout areas projected to be in the path of furious Santa Ana winds. The goal is to stamp out any new fires before they expand rapidly, and to continue to try to contain the Woolsey Fire, which has burned more than 83,000 acres, destroyed at least 150 houses and created a massive mandatory evacuation zone in Ventura and Los Angeles counties. But fire officials working in steep terrain that’s hard to reach say they’re short of crews and equipment, with many resources deployed to fight the Camp Fire.
The wildfire was 10 percent contained. The winds in the area hit by the Woolsey Fire were relatively mild Sunday morning but were expected to pick up again, with further windy conditions coming Monday and Tuesday.