Guard members search for signs of fire's victims

Interior chief, governor tour devastated California town

A searcher and his dog move through a burned home Wednesday in Paradise, Calif. At least 56 people have died, and about 8,800 homes were destroyed by the wildfire that roared through Paradise.
A searcher and his dog move through a burned home Wednesday in Paradise, Calif. At least 56 people have died, and about 8,800 homes were destroyed by the wildfire that roared through Paradise.

PARADISE, Calif. -- With scores of people still missing, National Guard troops searched Wednesday through charred debris for more victims of California's deadliest wildfire as top federal and state officials toured the ruins of a community completely destroyed by the flames.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke joined Gov. Jerry Brown on a visit to the leveled Northern California town of Paradise, telling reporters it was the worst fire devastation he had ever seen.

"Now is not the time to point fingers," Zinke said. "There are lots of reasons these catastrophic fires are happening." He cited warmer conditions, dead trees and poor forest management.

Brown, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump's policies, said he spoke with Trump, who pledged federal assistance.

"This is so devastating that I don't really have the words to describe it," Brown said, adding that officials would need to learn how to better prevent fires from becoming so deadly.

About 8,800 homes were destroyed when the flames reached Paradise, a former gold-mining camp popular with retirees, on Nov. 8. The Camp Fire has become California's deadliest wildfire, killing at least 56 people. That fire is 35 percent contained.

There were also three fatalities from other blazes in Southern California.

The Woolsey Fire, which is burning west of Los Angeles, has swept through parts of Malibu. The fire is 40 percent contained and has charred more than 97,000 acres, but firefighters believed they were gaining the upper hand.

A third fire, the Hill Fire in Ventura County, has been kept to about 4,500 acres and is 90 percent contained.

It will take years to rebuild Paradise, a town of 27,000, if people decide that's what should be done, said Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains looks like a wasteland.

"The infrastructure is basically a total rebuild at this point," Long said. "You're not going to be able to rebuild Paradise the way it was."

Temporary schools and hospitals will be opened, Long said. Officials are also looking to send in mobile homes for thousands of people left homeless.

Debris removal in Paradise and outlying communities will have to wait until the search for victims finishes, he said.

That grim search continued Wednesday.

On one street, ash and dust flew up as roughly 20 National Guard members wearing white jumpsuits, helmets and breathing masks lifted giant heaps of bent and burned metal in what was left of a home. Pink and blue chalk drawings of a cat and a flower remained on the driveway, near a scorched toy truck.

The soldiers focused on the homes of the missing. If anything resembling human remains is found, a coroner takes over.

After the soldiers finished at the site, a chaplain huddled with them in prayer.

The number of missing is "fluctuating every day" as people are located or remains are found, said Steve Collins, a deputy with the Butte County sheriff's office.

Authorities on Wednesday released the names of about 100 people who were still missing, including many in their 80s and 90s, and dozens more could still be unaccounted for. Sheriff's office spokesman Megan McMann said the list was incomplete because detectives were concerned they would be overwhelmed with calls from relatives if the entire list was released.

"We can't release them all at once," McMann said. "So they are releasing the names in batches."

Authorities have not updated the total number of missing since Sunday, when 228 people were unaccounted for.

Meanwhile, friends and relatives of the missing grew increasingly desperate. A message board at a shelter was filled with photos of the missing and pleas for any information.

"I hope you are okay," read one handwritten note on the board filled with sheets of notebook paper. Another had a picture of a missing man: "If seen, please have him call."

Some of the missing are not on the list, said Sol Bechtold, who is searching for his 75-year-old mother, Joanne Caddy, whose house burned down along with the rest of her neighborhood in Magalia, just north of Paradise.

Bechtold said he spoke with the sheriff's office Wednesday morning, and authorities confirmed they have an active missing-person case on Caddy. But Caddy, a widow who lived alone and did not drive, was not on the list.

"The list they published is missing a lot of names," Bechtold said. Community members have compiled their own list.

A sheriff's deputy asked Bechtold for information that could identify Caddy's remains, such as any history of broken bones. He told the deputy that she had a knee replacement. Bechtold predicted that the death toll would rise sharply.

"I feel horrible for the sheriff. I feel horrible for the people of Paradise and Magalia," he said. "It's just a no-win situation unless a few hundred folks just show up out of nowhere."

To speed up identification of remains, officials are using portable devices that can identify genetic material in a couple of hours, rather than days or weeks.

Accounts of narrow escapes from the flames continued to emerge. More than a dozen people who were trapped by a wall of fire survived by plunging into a cold lake.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday that a family of four, their 90-year-old neighbor and their pets sought safety in the chilly Concow Reservoir after the roaring fire surrounded their homes.

The family stood in shoulder-deep water as flames singed the vegetation on the shore behind them. Not far away, at least a dozen others rushed into the lake after the caravan of vehicles they were in was cut off by flames.

Before the Paradise tragedy, the deadliest single fire on record in California was a 1933 blaze in Griffith Park in Los Angeles that killed 29 people.

The causes of the fires currently raging remained under investigation, but they broke out around the time and place that two utilities reported equipment trouble.

People who lost homes in the Northern California blaze sued Pacific Gas & Electric Co. on Tuesday, accusing the utility of negligence and blaming it for the fire.

In a corporate filing Wednesday, the utility said that if its equipment caused the fire, it "would be expected to have a material impact on PG&E Corporation's and the Utility's financial condition, results of operations, liquidity, and cash flows."

Since the fire began last Thursday, the utility's stock has lost half its value.

After destructive fires swept through wine country last year, the utility faced similar liability questions. Wall Street estimates that the utility faces up to $15 billion in liabilities from those fires, which also burned thousands of homes. It has raised the possibility of bankruptcy if it cannot get some relief.

Investigators already have linked Pacific Gas & Electric Co. lines to some October 2017 fires, including the Atlas Fire that killed six people and destroyed 400 homes, and the Redwood Valley Fire that killed nine and destroyed 500 structures. Officials continue to investigate the cause of the largest of the wine country fires, the Tubbs Fire, which swept into Santa Rosa.

Information for this article was Kathleen Ronayne, Andrew Selsky, Janie Har, Sudhin Thanawala, Jocelyn Gecker and Olga R. Rodriguez of The Associated Press; by Thomas Fuller of The New York Times; and by Alejandra Reyes-Velarde of the Los Angeles Times.

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The New York Times/STUART PALLEY

Firefighters check a burned-out vehicle Wednesday on the side of Mulholland Highway near Malibu, Calif. The fire that swept through the area west of Los Angeles has charred more than 97,000 acres.

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The New York Times/STUART PALLEY

This road sign seen Wednesday on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif., was melted by the Woolsey Fire.

A Section on 11/15/2018

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