Wildfire which razed Paradise is now the joint deadliest in state history leaving 29 dead and 228 missing as 8,000 firefighters battle the raging infernos across California which have killed 31 in total
Gov Jerry Brown asked President Donald Trump to declare major disaster to bolster emergency response
Officials announced six more deaths in Northern California, raising the death toll to 29 in town of Paradise
One of the fire’s victims was an ailing woman whose body was found in bed in a burned-out house in Concow
Ellen Walker, who was in her early 70s, was home alone when fire struck on Thursday, according to a friend
The statewide total of deaths from the wildfires reached 31 as of Sunday night and 228 people are still missing
Butte County Sheriff Cory Honea said human remains recovered Sunday included five bodies found at homes
Another body was found in a car; Honea said in some cases they were only able to recover bone fragments
Officials announced that the city of Calabasas was put under mandatory evacuation order Sunday evening
Calabasas, which is home to Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian, is being threatened by the Woolsey Fire
By VALERIE EDWARDS
DAILYMAIL.COM
11 November 2018
Authorities have reported six additional deaths in a Northern California, raising the death toll to 29 and making it the deadliest wildfire on record in California history.
Butte County Sheriff Cory Honea said the human remains recovered on Sunday included five bodies found at homes and one in a vehicle in Paradise.
Honea said the devastation was so complete in some neighborhoods that ‘it’s very difficult to determine whether or not there may be human remains there’.
‘In some cases, the only remains we are able to recover are bones or bone fragments,’ Honea said.
He also announced that 228 people remain unaccounted for since the fire began Thursday and incinerated the foothill town.
The statewide total of deaths from wildfires reached 31.
One of the fire’s victims was an ailing woman whose body was found in bed in a burned-out house in Concow, near Paradise.
Ellen Walker, who was in her early 70s, was home alone when the fire struck on Thursday, according to Nancy Breeding, a family friend.
The 29 deaths matched the deadliest single fire on record, a 1933 blaze in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, though a series of wildfires in Northern California wine country last fall killed 44 people and destroyed more than 5,000 homes.
‘This weighs heavy on all of us,’ Honea said. ‘Myself and especially those staff members who are out there doing what is important work but certainly difficult work.’
Ten search and recovery teams are working in Paradise – a town of 27,000 that was largely incinerated on Thursday – and in surrounding communities.
Authorities called in a mobile DNA lab and anthropologists to help identify victims of the most destructive wildfire in California history.
By early afternoon, one of the two black hearses stationed in Paradise had picked up another set of remains.
People looking for friends or relatives called evacuation centers, hospitals, police and the coroner’s office.
Officials and relatives held out hope that many of those unaccounted for were safe and simply had no cellphones or other ways to contact loved ones. The sheriff’s office in the stricken northern county set up a missing-persons call center to help connect people.
Gov Jerry Brown asked President Donald Trump to declare a major disaster to bolster the emergency response and help residents recover.
Trump has blamed ‘poor’ forest management for the fires. Brown told a press briefing that federal and state governments must do more forest management but said that’s not the source of the problem.
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