Twenty-five people are dead, but with more than 100 missing, the count is expected to rise.<\/b>
\nPARADISE, Calif. \u2014 With hearses standing by, crews stepped up the search for bodies in the smoking ruins of Paradise \u2013 and relatives desperately looked for more than 100 missing loved ones \u2013 as wildfires raged Sunday on both ends of the state.
The statewide death toll stood at 25 and appeared certain to rise.
At least five search teams were working in Paradise \u2013 a town of 27,000 that was largely incinerated on Thursday \u2013 and in surrounding Northern California 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\u2019s office.
Sol Bechtold drove from shelter to shelter looking for his mother, Joanne Caddy, a 75-year-old widow whose house burned down along with the rest of her neighborhood in Magalia, just north of Paradise. She lived alone and did not drive.
Bechtold posted a flyer on social media, pinned it to bulletin boards at shelters and showed her picture around to evacuees, asking if anyone recognized her. He ran across a few of Caddy\u2019s neighbors, but they hadn\u2019t seen her.
As he drove through the smoke and haze to yet another shelter, he said, \u201cI\u2019m also under a dark emotional cloud. Your mother\u2019s somewhere and you don\u2019t know where she\u2019s at. You don\u2019t know if she\u2019s safe.\u201d
He added: \u201cI\u2019ve got to stay positive. She\u2019s a strong, smart woman.\u201d
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\u2019s office in the stricken northern county set up a missing-persons call center to help connect people.
More than 8,000 firefighters in all battled three large wildfires burning across nearly 400 square miles in Northern and Southern California, with out-of-state crews continuing to arrive and gusty, blowtorch winds starting up again.
The worst of the blazes was in Northern California, where the number of people killed in that fire alone, at least 23, made it the third-deadliest on record in the state. Two people were also found dead in a wildfire in Southern California, where flames tore through Malibu mansions and working-class Los Angeles suburbs alike.
The two severely burned bodies were discovered in a driveway in celebrity-studded Malibu, where residents forced from their homes included Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian West and Martin Sheen. Actor Gerard Butler said on Instagram that his Malibu home was \u201chalf-gone,\u201d and a publicist for Camille Grammer Meyer said the \u201cReal Housewives of Beverly Hills\u201d star lost her home in the seaside enclave.
Flames also besieged Thousand Oaks, the Southern California city in mourning over the massacre of 12 people in a shooting rampage at a country music bar Wednesday night.
In Northern California, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said the county consulted anthropologists from California State University at Chico because, in some cases, investigators have been able to recover only bones and bone fragments.
The devastation was so complete in some neighborhoods that \u201cit\u2019s very difficult to determine whether or not there may be human remains there,\u201d Honea said.
Authorities were also bringing in a DNA lab and encouraged people with missing relatives to submit samples to aid in identifying the dead after the blaze destroyed more than 6,700 buildings, nearly all of them homes.
Firefighters gained modest ground overnight against the blaze, which grew slightly to 170 square miles from the day before but was 25 percent contained, up from 20 percent, according to the state fire agency, Cal Fire.
But Cal Fire spokesman Bill Murphy warned that gusty winds predicted into Monday morning could spark \u201cexplosive fire behavior.\u201d
About 300,000 people statewide were under evacuation orders, most of them in Southern California.
Fire officials said Sunday morning that the larger of that region\u2019s two fires, the one that hit Malibu, grew to 130 square miles and was 10 percent contained. But the strong, dry Santa Ana winds that blow from the interior toward the coast returned after a one-day lull, fanning the flames.
The count of lost structures in both Southern California fires climbed to nearly 180, authorities said. The large mobile home community of Seminole Springs, in the rugged Santa Monica Mountains north of Malibu, appeared devastated.
Gov. Jerry Brown said he is requesting a major-disaster declaration from President Donald Trump that would make victims eligible for crisis counseling, housing and unemployment help, and legal aid.
Drought, warmer weather attributed to climate change, and the building of homes deeper into forests have led to longer and more destructive wildfire seasons in California. While California officially emerged from a five-year drought last year, much of the northern two-thirds of the state is abnormally dry.
\u201cThings are not the way they were 10 years ago.\u2026 The rate of spread is exponentially more than it used to be,\u201d said Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen, urging residents to evacuate rather than stay behind to try to defend their homes.
One of the Northern California fire\u2019s 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.
Breeding said Walker\u2019s husband was at work and called a neighbor to tell his wife to evacuate, but she was on medication and might not have been alert. Authorities confirmed her death late Friday.
\u201cA fireman took him to the house to confirm,\u201d Breeding said. \u201cThis is a devastating thing, and it\u2019s happening to so many people.\u201d
Send questions\/comments to the editors.
< Previous<\/p>\n

\n

Similarity rank: 53<\/div>\n

Sentiment rank: -1.2<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

TW posts: 1<\/div>\n

TW reposts: 0<\/div>\n

TW likes: 0<\/div>\n

TW sentiment: 0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n