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Tribune News Service

When the Camp Fire swept into the community of Paradise on Thursday, Shane Bender watched as the air filled with acrid smoke and glowing embers rained down on the rooftops of nearby houses.
Within minutes, dozens of men, women and children – some of them screaming and crying – were streaming down a two-lane street toward the safety of a hardware store car park.

Bender, a retired firefighter, helped guide them out, assuring them there was safety beyond the smoke.
Three days later, he is still trying to find out what happened to some of his neighbours.
He’s not sure how many are among the more than 200 missing in a fire that has already killed at least 42 people, the highest death toll in history from a single California wildfire.
California can burn, but climate change is now a matter of opinion, not science
The dead were found in burned-out cars, in the smouldering ruins of their homes, or next to their vehicles, apparently overcome by smoke and flames before they could jump in behind the wheel and escape.
In some cases, there were only charred fragments of bone, so small that coroner’s investigators used a wire basket to sift and sort them.

Bender stood outside his single-storey, wood-sided home in Paradise on Sunday.
Splotches of charred pine needles covered his yard like leopard spots, but his property was otherwise unscathed.
His was one of the few miracles in a blaze that authorities say has claimed 7,100 homes and 260 commercial structures.
“I’m having a hard time grasping what happened here,” said Bender, 31.
“I moved a year ago. I was just getting to know my neighbours. All good people.”

Bender said deputies had made visits to the residences of several neighbours listed as missing.
“They park, check the address and then start walking slowly, eyeballing the broken glass and Sheetrock for telltale signs,” he said.
The death toll from the devastating blaze, which has been dubbed the Camp Fire, surpassed the previous record of 29 lives lost in 1933 from the Griffith Park blaze in Los Angeles.
Gerard Butler shares chilling photo of his ‘half-gone’ Malibu home
Authorities reported two more people perished over the weekend in a separate blaze, called the Woolsey Fire, that has destroyed 435 structures and displaced some 200,000 people in the mountains and foothills near Southern California’s Malibu coast, west of Los Angeles.
US President Donald Trump, who drew criticism over the weekend for erroneously blaming the fires on “gross mismanagement” of forests, approved California Governor Jerry Brown’s request for a major disaster declaration on Monday.
The measure hastens availability of federal emergency aid to fire-stricken regions of the state.
The search for victims in northern California has been hampered by the fire, which is still burning in the area.
Through much of the weekend, the ground remained too hot for cadaver dogs to tread.
University anthropologists, trained in spotting bone fragments and other blackened body parts, systematically mined the ash and detritus of buildings wiped out in Paradise.
“In some cases, the fire burned so intensely that it burned everything to the ground, and in some cases it melted the metal,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said.
“In those cases it is possible the temperatures were high enough to completely consume the body.”
Markham Odell, 61, recalled the sky turned black as thick smoke blocked the early-morning sun that grim Thursday morning.

Out of nowhere, a dead bird fell, hitting him on the shoulder.
“I’ve never panicked at any time in my life,” Odell said.
“But I felt it start to come.”
One of the last things Odell grabbed was a copy of his home insurance policy.
Jane Palmer, 77, said she received four automated calls the night before the fire from Pacific Gas & Electric, telling her the utility was about to cut off her power, which it did about 9.30pm.

She said she realised Paradise was on fire and her mobile home park was threatened when she saw the smoke and flames.
As Palmer drove out, she encountered a neighbour, Patsy Jacobs, 62, trying to walk out, and she picked her up. Because Palmer cannot see well, Jacobs helped navigate her rescuer through the thick smoke.
Fears for 228 missing as merciless wildfires scorch California
“What pisses me off is I don’t think they told everybody soon enough,” said Kim Benn, 49, a neighbour who realised she needed to flee the fire when another resident pounded on her door.
Additional reporting by Associated Press and Reuters


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Natural disasters

California fires: in the ashes of Paradise, they sift for the victims with sieves

TOPSHOT - Yuba County Sheriff officers carry a body away from a burned residence in Paradise, California, on November 10, 2018. - Firefighters in California on November 10 battled raging blazes at both ends of the state that have left at least nine people dead and thousands of homes destroyed, but there was little hope of containing the flames anytime soon. So far, all nine fatalities were reported in the town of Paradise, in Butte County, where more than 6,700 buildings, most of them residences, have been consumed by the late-season inferno, which is now California's most destructive fire on record. (Photo by Josh Edelson / AFP)

TOPSHOT - A firefighter is silhouetted by a burning home along Pacific Coast Highway (Highway 1) during the Woolsey Fire on November 9, 2018 in Malibu, California. - About 75,000 homes have been evacuated in Los Angeles and Ventura counties due to two fires in the region. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP)

Flames consume a home as the Camp Fire tears through Paradise, Calif., on Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

University of Nevada Reno archaeology students recover human remains in a mobile home park in Paradise, Calif., on Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018. Twenty-three people have died so far in the destructive Camp Fire. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group/TNS)

TOPSHOT - A fallen power line is seen on top of burnt out vehicles on the side of the road in Paradise, California after the Camp fire tore through the area on November 10, 2018. - Firefighters in California on November 10 battled raging blazes at both ends of the state that have left at least nine people dead and thousands of homes destroyed, but there was little hope of containing the flames anytime soon. So far, all nine fatalities were reported in the town of Paradise, in Butte County, where more than 6,700 buildings, most of them residences, have been consumed by the late-season inferno, which is now California's most destructive fire on record. (Photo by Josh Edelson / AFP)

Anthropology students observe as human remains are recovered from a burned out home in Paradise, California, on Sunday. Photo: AP

Gerard Butler shares chilling photo of his ‘half-gone’ Malibu home after wildfire

Gerard Butler in front of what remains of his Malibu home. Photo: Instagram

A motorcycle begins to catch fire outside an engulfed structure at a park for recreational vehicles in Malibu, California. MUST CREDIT: Photo by Kyle Grillot for The Washington Post

This photo shows the remains of a beachside luxury home along the Pacific Coast Highway community of Point Dume in Malibu, California, on November 11, 2018, as the battle to control the Woolsey Fire continues. - Near Los Angeles, where the "Woolsey Fire" is threatening mansions and mobile homes alike in the coastal celebrity redoubt of Malibu, the death toll has been limited to two victims found in a vehicle on a private driveway. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP)

Death toll hits 25 from wildfires at both ends of California

Flames from the Camp fire burn near a home atop a ridge near Big Bend, California. Photo: AFP

TOPSHOT - This NASA Earth Observatory handout image taken on November 8, 2018 and released on November 10, 2018 shows the Camp Fire burning in Paradise, California. - The death toll from the most destructive fire to hit California rose to 23 on November 10 as rescue workers recovered more bodies of people killed by the devastating blaze. Ten of the bodies were found in the town of Paradise while four were discovered in the Concow area, both in Butte County, Honea said. (Photo by Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / JOSHUA STEVENS / NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY " - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS

(181111) -- MALIBU, Nov. 11, 2018 (Xinhua) -- Photo taken on Nov. 10, 2018 shows remains of a construction destroyed by fire in Malibu, California, the United States. (Xinhua/Li Ying) (djj)

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Tales of survival and loss are emerging from the aftermath of the devastating blaze that levelled the town on Paradise
The death toll from the northern California fire hit 42, making it the deadliest wildfire in state history


Tales of survival and loss are emerging from the aftermath of the devastating blaze that levelled the town on Paradise, where some bodies have been reduced to cinder and bone fragments.


United States