The Camp Fire burns along a ridge top near Big Bend, California. Crews working to contain the blaze faced deteriorating weather conditions. Photos / AP
The Camp Fire burns along a ridge top near Big Bend, California. Crews working to contain the blaze faced deteriorating weather conditions. Photos / AP
More than 100 people are unaccounted for in California's Camp Firein the Sierra Nevada foothills.
Already the most destructive wildfire in California history, the Camp Fire has killed 23 people in three days.
Although the fire had been 25 per cent contained by today, high temperatures and gusty winds made the weather optimal for the Northern California fire to spread for at least another day.
As of yesterday, the Camp Fire had destroyed nearly 7000 structures in and around the mountain town of Paradise and has been blamed for most of the last week's fire deaths. Two people were also killed as a result of separate fires in Southern California.
But the bulk of firefighter resources were focused on the Camp Fire, the deadliest in the state since 1991. The 1933 Griffith Park wildfire in Los Angeles County killed 29.
Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea, who is also the county coroner, said that he had to add a fifth search-and-recovery team to help find bodies. Authorities have not released the names of victims and have continued to search for more.
His office has also ordered an additional DNA lab truck and received help from anthropologists at California State University at Chico for a time-consuming and daunting task: In some cases, investigators have found only pieces of bone.
As the fire has moved on, displaced residents were allowed to return to whatever was left of their homes, in some cases finding only ash and charred foundations.
Governor Jerry Brown, (D), requested a presidential major disaster declaration, which would make the hardest-hit communities eligible for housing, unemployment and other support programmes and allow state and local governments to repair or replace fire-damaged facilities and infrastructure. FEMA has already granted a state request for emergency aid.
US President Donald Trump has alternated between offering sympathy for displaced people and firefighters, and lashing out at California's leaders over what he deemed poor forest management.
"With proper Forest Management, we can stop the devastation constantly going on in California. Get Smart!" he tweeted, echoing a criticism that he has frequently levelled at California officials and threatening to withhold federal money.
A plane drops fire retardant on a burning hillside in Malibu, California.
Officials shot back that increasingly destructive fires are a result of global warming, which dries out vegetation and turns large swaths of grassland into a tinderbox.
A spokesman for Brown said that more federal forest land has burned than state land, adding that the state has expanded its forestry budget while the Trump Administration has cut its budget for forest services.
Brian Rice, president of the California Professional Firefighters association, chided Trump, calling his words "ill-informed, ill-timed and demeaning to those who are suffering as well as the men and women on the front lines".
As the argument intensified, state firefighters found their resources divided between a historic fire in the north and a pair of fires in the south.
Near Los Angeles, about 200,000 people were displaced by the expanding Woolsey Fire, which began last week near Simi Valley, even as fire departments were responding to a second wildfire, the Hill Fire, just west of Thousand Oaks.
"Paradise is gone," said one man, who escaped the town with only the clothes he was wearing. "There’s nothing to go back to." https://t.co/goxuE5NUcs
The flames raced from the Conejo Valley to the Pacific Ocean, across Highway 101 and the Santa Monica mountains, at speeds that shocked veteran fire officials.
Authorities said two bodies were found, both burned, in Malibu in a vehicle that had been in the path of the wildfire, though homicide investigators are still working on that case and have not officially declared a cause of death.
Fire crews, including many from out of state, were deployed throughout areas projected to be in the path of furious Santa Ana winds. The goal is to stamp out any new fires before they expand rapidly, and to continue to try to contain the Woolsey Fire, which has burned more than 33,590ha, destroyed at least 150 houses and created a massive mandatory evacuation zone in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.
But fire officials working in steep terrain that's hard to reach say they are short of crews and equipment, with many resources deployed in Northern California to fight the Camp Fire.
In Oak Park, a community 65km from Los Angeles, Richard Gwynn, 75, and his wife, Lynda Gwynn, 70, surveyed the burned landscape of what used to be their home. She became emotional, looking at a canyon where her children had once played, now blackened by fire.
Photos: Wildfires have long been a fixture of the California experience. But not like this. https://t.co/g58mH5of70
"Winds are coming back tonight, and they're going to blow all day," Richard Gwynn said. "But there's nothing left to burn."
Fire officials warned that the winds would be back today, and they were right. The officials pounded home a warning to residents: Don't go back into the mandatory evacuation zones. Stay away. It's not safe. The destructive wildfires are nowhere near extinguished and remain exceedingly dangerous.
As they spoke, a massive plume of smoke appeared to the south, toward Malibu, where dozens of homes had been lost in the Woolsey Fire.
"We're concerned about the fire jumping out, coming behind us, burning a lot of the territory that has not burned," said Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby.
He said the footprint of the Woolsey Fire contains many unburned areas that are vulnerable to embers stoked by gusts. The fierce winds, which may last for three days, could make drops from firefighting air tankers less effective.
And with the Woolsey Fire only 10 per cent contained, it could roll south along the Pacific Coast, from Malibu to Topanga Canyon and on to Pacific Palisades, to the doorstep of Santa Monica.
"The only thing we're not concerned about is the ocean," Osby said.
