Search for bodies as death toll in Calif. fires rises.
Scores are missing; some in south get OK to return home
PARADISE, Calif. — The dead were found in burned-out cars, in the smoldering ruins of their homes, or next to their vehicles, apparently overcome by smoke and flames before they could jump in behind the wheel and escape. In some cases, there were only charred fragments of bone, so small that coroner’s investigators used a wire basket to sift and sort them.
At least 42 people were confirmed dead in the wildfire that turned the Northern California town of Paradise and outlying areas into hell on Earth, making it the deadliest blaze in state history. The search for bodies continued Monday.
Many still being sought
Hundreds of people were unaccounted for by the sheriff’s reckoning, four days after the fire swept over the town of 27,000 and practically wiped it off the map with flames so fierce that authorities brought in a mobile DNA lab and forensic anthropologists to help identify the dead.
Meanwhile, a landowner near where the blaze began, Betsy Ann Cowley, said she got an email from Pacific Gas & Electric Co. the day before the fire last week telling her that crews needed to come onto her property because the utility’s power lines were causing sparks. PG&E had no comment on the email, and state officials said the cause of the inferno was under investigation.
As the search for victims dragged on, friends and relatives of the missing called hospitals, police, shelters and the coroner’s office in hopes of learning what became of their loved ones. Paradise was a popular retirement community, and about a quarter of the population was over 65.
Tad Teays awaited word on his 90-year-old dementia-stricken mother. Darlina Duarte was desperate for information about her half-brother, a diabetic who was largely housebound because he had lost his legs. And Barbara Hall tried in vain to find out whether her aunt and the woman’s husband, who are in their 80s and 90s, made it out alive from their retirement community.
“Did they make it in their car? Did they get away? Did their car go over the edge of a mountain somewhere? I just don’t know,” said Hall, adding that the couple had only a landline and calls were not going through to it.
Megan James, of Newfoundland, Canada, searched via Twitter from the other side of the continent for information about her aunt and uncle, whose house in Paradise burned down and whose vehicles were still there. On Monday, she asked on Twitter for someone to take over the posts.
“I need to sleep and cry,” James added. “Just PRAY. Please.”
The blaze was part of an outbreak of wildfires on both ends of the state. Together, they were blamed for 44 deaths, including two in celebrity-studded Malibu in Southern California , where firefighters appeared to be gaining ground against a roughly 143square-mile blaze that destroyed at least 370 structures, with hundreds more feared lost.
Some of the thousands of people forced from their homes by the blaze were allowed to return, and authorities reopened U.S. 101, a major freeway through the fire zone in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Malibu celebrities and mobilehome dwellers in nearby mountains were slowly learning whether their homes had been spared or reduced to ash.
325 square miles burned
All told, more 8,000 firefighters statewide were battling wildfires that destroyed more than 7,000 structures and scorched more than 325 square miles, the flames feeding on dry brush and driven by blowtorch winds.
The 29 dead in Northern California matched the deadliest single fire on record, a 1933 blaze in Griffith Park in Los Angeles. A series of wildfires in Northern California’s wine country last fall killed 44 people and destroyed more than 5,000 homes.
In Southern California, fire officials lifted some evacuation orders Monday while warning residents to remain vigilant as strong winds fanned new fires.
Paul Rasmussen, his pregnant wife and 6-year-old daughter wee among those who fled their Malibu homes Friday for what they thought mightt be the last time.
His only hope that the large home, once billed in real estate listings as “Shangri-La,” would survive was that his next-door neighbor, Randy Berkeley, would not only protect his own house, but also Rasmussen's.
On Monday, after driving a winding road across charred slopes and past smoldering ruins of other houses in Decker Canyon, Rasmussen wrapped Berkeley in a bear hug of thanks after finding their two houses still standing untouched by fire.
“Without him, I knew it was going to be a loss,” Rasmussen said. “He just went above and beyond.”