Death toll from Calif. fires up to 31; poised to break record
13 November, 2018
The death toll from wildfires raging in California rose to 31 on Sunday after six more people were found killed in what was poised to become the deadliest wildfire in state history.
Officials said the bodies of five people were found in burned-out homes and the sixth was found in a vehicle in northern California’s Camp Fire, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea told reporters on Sunday evening.
Some 228 people are still unaccounted for, Honea said, while another 137 people have been located after friends or relatives reported being unable to contact them.
The so-called Camp Fire in the northern part of the state has claimed at least 29 lives since it broke out on Thursday. Hundreds of miles to the south, at least two people have died in the Woolsey Fire threatening the wealthy beach community of Malibu, near Los Angeles.
Looting was reported in the southern fire area and arrests were made, police reported.
Hot dry winds expected to blow until Tuesday whipped up the flames and heightened the urgency of evacuation orders, officials said. It has been more than 210 days since the area received half an inch or more of rain, making it easy for spot fires to spread to fresh patches of tinder-dry vegetation, fire officials said on Sunday.
“We are entering a new normal,” said Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen, noting at a news conference that California’s fires in 2018 grow far more quickly than they did even 10 years ago.
“The rate of spread is exponentially more than it used to be,” he said.
Several officials urged residents to heed evacuation orders, noting they themselves had followed orders to leave their homes for safety.
“Winds are already blowing,” Chief Daryl Osby of the Los Angeles County Fire Department said. “They are going to blow for the next three days. Your house can be rebuilt but you can’t bring your life back.”
Crews pushed forward to achieve 25 percent containment of the Camp Fire in northern California, which had burned 45,000 hectares at the edge of the Plumas National Forest, according to Cal Fire’s website.
In Southern California, where the Woolsey Fire scorched at least 83,275 acres, the blaze was only 10 percent contained.
The Camp Fire burned down more than 6,700 homes and businesses in Paradise, more structures than any other California wildfire on record.
Its death toll now equals that of the Griffith Park Fire in 1933, the deadliest wildfire on record in California.
Several of the bodies discovered earlier this week were found in or near burned out cars, police have said. The flames descended on Paradise so fast that many people were forced to abandon their vehicles and run for their lives down the only road through the mountain town.
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