At least 31 killed by wildfires in California

More than 200 fire engines and firefighting crews from around the country were being rushed to California on Wednesday to help battle infernos which have left at least 31 people dead and thousands homeless.

“This is a serious, critical, catastrophic event,” California fire chief Ken Pimlott told reporters. “We’re not going to be out of the woods for a great number of days to come.” Pimlott said that after a respite on Tuesday winds kicked up again on Wednesday and the winds and dry conditions were hampering efforts to contain the blazes.

“We are still impacted by five years of drought,” the director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said.

“These fires were driven by the critically dry fuel bed,” he added. “We are literally looking at explosive vegetation.”

Pimlott said the death toll from the fires, among the deadliest ever in California, could be expected to go up further.

Thirteen of the deaths have occurred in Sonoma County, a wine-producing region which has been particularly hard hit, while six people have died in Mendocino County. There have been two deaths in Napa County and two in Yuba County.

Entire neighbourhoods in Santa Rosa, a city of 175,000 which is the county seat of Sonoma County, have been reduced to ashes. Thousands of people have been left homeless and 25,000 people have evacuated their homes in Sonoma County alone, according to officials.

More than 3,500 homes and businesses have been destroyed including several wineries in Sonoma and Napa counties, the heart of the state’s wine production.

Six hundred people have been reported missing in Sonoma County, but more than half of them have been located, Sheriff Robert Giordano told reporters. “There’s still 285 on our missing list that we’re looking for,” he said.

Pimlott said firefighters were battling a total of 22 wildfires that have burned over 170,000 acres and that reinforcements had been requested. He said 170 fire engines had been ordered from the neighboring states of Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington and another 154 engines from elsewhere around the country.

In addition, 60 firefighting crews from other states were on their way to California to provide assistance, he said. “Our primary goal is to get these resources into the fires.” He said 73 helicopters, 30 air tankers and nearly 8,000 firefighters were currently taking part in the effort to extinguish the blazes.

President Donald Trump has declared a major disaster in California, freeing up federal funding and resources to help fight the fires. And Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in eight counties.

Bob Nelson, 53, stopped in his black pickup truck at a police roadblock near Santa Rosa, said he fled his home on Sunday and returned on Tuesday.

“There was no damage,” he said. “But then we got evacuated again.
“We don’t know about our house now,” Nelson told AFP. “I’ve got no idea. It’s in the middle of two fires.”

Michael Desmond, 63, does know, and the news is bad: his home was one of hundreds destroyed by the blaze in the Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa. “I feel violated; like a thief came in,” said Desmond, who sobbed as he surveyed the rubble of the house where he grew up.

Much of the damage in Santa Rosa can be seen from US Route 101, the north-south highway which runs from California through Oregon to Washington state.

The Sonoma County Hilton perched on a hill overlooking Route 101 is a ruin of charred wood and twisted metal, as is the nearby Fountaingrove Inn. An enormous K-Mart store has been entirely destroyed with only a couple of blackened walls still standing.

Among the wineries which reportedly suffered damage were William Hill Estate Winery in Napa, Signorello Vineyards, Stags’ Leap and Chimney Rock.

Forest fires are common in the western United States during dry, hot months but, with 21 deaths so far, this year’s California fires are among the deadliest ever.

The Griffith Park fire in Los Angeles County in 1933 killed at least 29 people and 25 people died in the 1991 Oakland Hills fire.
The death toll from raging California wildfires rose to 31 Thursday as body recovery teams used cadaver dogs to locate victims, making it the deadliest series of blazes in the state´s history.

The fires, which began on Sunday, have swept through California´s wine country, leaving thousands of people homeless and burning over 190,000 acres (76,000 hectares) of land.

Gusty winds on Thursday were hampering the efforts of the 8,000 firefighters battling 20 blazes, and weather conditions were not forecast to improve.

"What this means is that our fires will continue to burn erratically," California fire chief Ken Pimlott told a news conference. "They have the potential to shift in any direction at any time.

"We are a long way from being done with this catastrophe," he said.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) announced Thursday that the fires have claimed 31 lives, while

Sheriff Rob Giordano of hard-hit Sonoma County said his department has received around 1,100 reports of missing persons.

Of those, "745 of them, roughly, have been located safe," while "we still have 400 outstanding," Giordano said, noting that the actual figure may be smaller because there are sometimes duplicate reports.

He said targeted body recovery efforts had begun in cases where all other leads were exhausted. 
"We´re moving into a recovery phase," he said. "We have cadaver dogs up here that can basically scent bodies and help us find people."

Giordano warned that it was "going to be a slow process" as fires continue to burn, and that identifying victims would be difficult.

"Some of these remains are actually intact bodies -- much easier to identify, much easier to get things from. Some of them are merely ashes and bones, and we may never get truly confirmative identification on ashes," he said.

In cases in which bodies have been badly burned, authorities have had to use dental records and serial numbers on medical devices to identify the dead.

Asked if he expected the death toll to rise, Giordano replied: "I´d be unrealistic if I didn´t."

The sheriff said that of the 17 people confirmed dead in Sonoma County, 10 have now been identified.

"The youngest person on this list is 57 years old. The bulk of them are in their 70s and 80s," he said.

As recovery teams fanned out searching for fire victims, evacuation orders were issued for towns in wine-producing Napa and Sonoma counties, where hundreds of people have already lost their homes to the fast-moving infernos.

Residents of Calistoga, a resort town of some 5,000 people in Napa, and Geyserville, a town of around 800 people in Sonoma, were told to leave and seek shelter elsewhere.