Zinke says Northern California fire costs likely in billions

PARADISE, Calif. (AP) — Costs associated with a deadly Northern California wildfire will likely be in the billions, U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Monday as he returned to the town of Paradise, saying he has never witnessed such devastation. “There’s a lot of things I’d rather spend this federal money on rather than repairing damage of things that have been destroyed,” he said. Zinke nodded to other public services, such as improving visitor experiences at Yosemite National Park or thinning forests as options for the money.

No additional remains were found Monday, but the wildfire’s death toll rose to 88 after investigators determined that three separate sets of human remains contained remains from more than one person.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said 203 names remain on the list of those unaccounted for after the Camp Fire swept through the rural area 140 miles (225 kilometers) north of San Francisco. He released the names of 16 people who died in the blaze, ranging in age from 58 to 95. The pace of newly discovered remains has slowed in recent days, and Honea said searchers are making “good progress” as they methodically sweep through any property where people may have died.

“The remains that we are now recovering are now remains that were almost completely consumed by the fire,” he said. Anthropologists are sifting through bone fragments to help coroners identify the remains, he said.

Though he has declined to characterize how much of the area has been searched, Honea said that highly populated areas and places that were identified as possibly having deceased people have been fully searched and search teams are now spreading out into less dense areas of devastation.