Hell in Paradise: fire crews in grim search for California's dead

What you need to know:

  • Rescuers spent hours on Saturday collecting bodies around Paradise and placing them in a black hearse.
  • Evacuation orders have been issued to more than 250,000 people across California, with authorities urging residents not to ignore warnings to flee.

PARADISE, US

Search teams recovered bodies from the devastation left by California's most destructive ever wildfire on Sunday, as the state wide death toll rose to at least 27 with high winds hampering the effort to save lives and homes.

Firefighters took advantage of a brief calm overnight to make headway against the multiple blazes, but conditions were hellish on Sunday, with winds forecast to gust as high as 60 miles (100 kilometers) an hour, and humidity low.

In fire zones north and south, acrid smoke blanketed the sky for miles, the sun barely visible. On the ground, cars caught in the blaze were reduced to mangled metal carcasses, while power lines were gnawed by the flames.

The largest inferno — the so-called "Camp Fire" in the northern foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains — has destroyed 6,700 homes, business and other buildings in the town of Paradise, effectively wiping it off the map.

Yuba and Butte County Sheriff officers label a body bag after collecting the body of a victim of the Camp fire in Concow, California on November 11, 2018. PHOTO | JOSH EDELSON | AFP

At least 25 people have lost their lives in and around the community of 27,000, according to an official count by authorities.

In Magalia, north of Paradise, workers from a local mortuary team recover a body on Sunday, which was put into a blue bag and loaded into a hearse.

And in the hills above the nearby Concow area, a recovery team discovered the body of another person near several cars on a dirt road running alongside a cannabis farm.

The blaze is now tied with the 1991 "Tunnel Fire" as the second-deadliest fire to hit the state. The deadliest was the "Griffith Park Fire" in 1933, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).

At the southern end of the state, where the "Woolsey Fire" is threatening mansions and mobile homes alike in the coastal celebrity redoubt of Malibu, the death toll has been limited to two victims found in a vehicle on a private driveway.

Los Angeles County Fire chief Daryl Osby told reporters of his gratitude to firefighters "who've done all they could do save tens of thousands of people's lives and thousands of people's homes."

EVACUATION

Rescuers spent hours on Saturday collecting bodies around Paradise and placing them in a black hearse. Body parts were transported by bucket, while intact remains were carried in body bags.

At the Holly Hills Mobile Estate the mobile homes had been reduced to smouldering piles of debris. Yellow police tape delineated spots that were tagged "Doe C" and "Doe D," a grim marker of the bodies that had recently been removed.

Locals fled the danger, but police told AFP some farmers returned to check on their cattle.

Fanned by strong winds, the "Camp Fire" has so far scorched 111,000 acres (45,000 hectares) and is 25 percent contained, Cal Fire said. So far, three of the more than 4,000 firefighters deployed have been injured.

They estimate they will need three weeks to fully contain the blaze.

Evacuation orders have been issued to more than 250,000 people across California, with authorities urging residents not to ignore warnings to flee.

"This is not the new normal, this is the new abnormal. And this new abnormal will continue, certainly in the next 10 to 15 to 20 years," California Governor Jerry Brown told a news conference on Sunday.

"Unfortunately, the best science is telling us that the dryness, warmth, drought, all those things, they're gonna intensify," he said, referring to conditions conducive to fires.

TRUMP SLAMMED

Almost 6,000 miles away, President Donald Trump, in France for World War I commemorations, drew fierce criticism for an unsympathetic reaction to the devastation.

"There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor," Trump tweeted, threatening to withdraw federal support.

Brian Rice, the head of the California Professional Firefighters, slammed the tweet as "ill-informed, ill-timed and demeaning to those who are suffering as well as the men and women on the front lines."

He said the president's claim that forest policies were mismanaged "is dangerously wrong."

The tweet also drew political criticism. Republican Senator Cory Gardner told ABC News on Sunday: "I don't think it's appropriate to threaten funding.

"That's not going to happen. Funding will be available. It always is available to our people wherever they are, whatever disaster they are facing."

'WOOLSEY FIRE'

In southern California, the "Woolsey Fire" engulfed parts of Thousand Oaks, where the community is still shell-shocked after a Marine Corps veteran shot dead 12 people in a country music bar on Wednesday.

It has consumed around 83,000 acres, destroyed at least 177 buildings and was ten percent contained, Cal Fire said Sunday.

The blaze reached the Paramount Ranch, destroying sets used for hundreds of productions including HBO'S sci-fi western "Westworld," network officials said.

Keegan Gibbs, 33, was crushed to find his childhood Malibu home had been consumed by flames.

"Malibu is a really small community and gets a bad rap for being this kind of elitist, snobby place, and it's exactly the opposite," Gibbs told The Los Angeles Times.​