Officials try to account for hundreds missing in fire
CHICO, CALIF. — With 63 people confirmed dead in the Northern California wildfire, authorities Friday tried to winnow down a slapped-together list of the missing more than 600 names long, hoping many of them got out safely in the chaos over a week ago.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, will travel to the disaster zone Saturday to get a look at the grief and damage from the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century and could encounter locals resentful over his suggestion California is to blame for its misfortune.
Butte County spokeswoman Miranda Bowersox said the “unaccounted for” list released by the sheriff’s office late Thursday was an effort to put names out there so people can call in to say they are OK.
The roster probably includes some who fled the blaze and do not realize they’ve been reported missing, Sheriff Kory Honea said.
Some on the list have been confirmed as dead by family and friends on social media. Others have been located and are safe, but authorities haven’t gotten around to marking them as found.
Tamara Conry said she should never have been the list.
“My husband and I are not missing and never were!” Conry wrote Thursday night on Facebook. “We have no family looking for us . ... I called and left a message to take our names off.”
Authorities compiled the list by going back to listen to all the dispatch calls they received since the fire started, to make sure they didn’t miss anyone.
In last year’s catastrophic wildfires in California wine country, Sonoma County authorities at one point listed more than 2,000 people as missing. But they slowly whittled down the number. In the end, 44 people died in several counties.
The wildfire this time practically burned the town of Paradise to the ground and heavily damaged the outlying communities of Magalia and Concow on Nov. 8, destroying 9,700 houses and 144 apartment buildings, authorities said.
Firefighters continued to gain ground against the blaze, which blackened 222 square miles but was 45 percent contained and posed no imminent threat to populated areas. Crews managed stop it from spreading toward Oroville, population 19,000.
This patch of California, a former Gold Rush region in the Sierra Nevada foothills, is to some extent Trump country, with Trump beating Hillary Clinton in Butte County by 4 percentage points in 2016.