Nine people were declared dead and tens of thousands evacuated on Friday as fierce wildfires raged across California, with one rapidly spreading blaze threatening the famed resort of Malibu.
All of the fatalities were reported in a massive late-season inferno in the town of Paradise, in Butte County north of the state capital, Sacramento, where the entire population of 26,000 was ordered to leave, officials said.
The fast-moving blaze, known as the “Camp Fire,” began on Thursday morning.
Photo: AP
Fanned by strong winds, it has scorched 28,300 hectares and has not been contained, the California Fire Department said.
Two other fires broke out in southern California, one in Ventura County near Thousand Oaks.
“The magnitude of destruction we have seen is really unbelievable and heartbreaking, and our hearts go to everybody who has been affected by this,” said Mark Ghilarducci, the director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
Late on Friday, Butte County Sheriff Korey Honea updated the Camp Fire death toll.
“It’s my sad duty to confirm that we now have a total of nine fatalities,” he said, four more fatalities beyond the five reported earlier.
Details were limited and Honea did not release names of the victims.
“I don’t have all of the details because we have investigators out on the field attempting to get to those locations” where the casualties were reported, Honea told a news conference.
However, he did say that four people were found inside a vehicle in the Paradise area, while another was found nearby outside the vehicle.
Three more were found outside a residence and one inside a house.
Dozens of other people were reported missing.
Residents who managed to escape Paradise posted harrowing videos to social media as they drove through tunnels of swirling smoke and orange flames to outrun the wildfire.
The flames destroyed hundreds of homes, a hospital, a gas station, several restaurants and numerous vehicles in Paradise, officials said.
A photographer on the scene saw houses enveloped in flames, while others had already been reduced to ashes and cars burned to husks.
Authorities issued mandatory evacuation orders for more than 52,000 people in the scenic area in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, including some residents of Chico, population 93,000, near Paradise.
California Governor-elect Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency to provide assistance to the fire-hit areas.
More than 2,200 firefighters were battling the blaze, backed up by helicopters and water tankers.
“The whole lower side of Paradise is totally engulfed in flames right now,” Kevin Winstead, a resident of nearby Magalia, told KIEM TV. “All of it is engulfed in flames right now.
“Not one home will be left standing,” he said. “I’m devastated.”
“We’re just hoping that our brand new home that we were hoping to move into tomorrow is not burned to the ground,” Winstead said. “We’re kind of all shaking right now.”
In southern California, authorities said about 105,000 people had been evacuated.
The Ventura County Fire Department said the “Woolsey Fire” had burned about 14,000 hectares, and evacuation orders were issued for about 88,000 homes in the county and neighboring Los Angeles County.
“It is critical that residents pay close attention to evacuation orders,” the Los Angeles County Fire Department said on Twitter. “This is a very dangerous wind-driven fire.”
The Woolsey Fire has jumped Highway 101 near the town of Agoura Hills and portions of the main coastal north-south artery have been shut down, triggering mandatory evacuations, including the entire city of Malibu.
“We heard this was coming so we set up on the sprinklers and we hosed the whole house down,” said Patrick Henry, a Malibu resident. “We pretty much had enough time to get the dogs in the trunk.”
Reality TV star Kim Kardashian West, who lives just north of coastal Malibu in Calabasas, revealed on Instagram that she was forced to flee her home.
“Just landed back home and had 1 hour to pack up & evacuate our home. I pray everyone is safe,” she said.
Actress Alyssa Milano, one of Kardashian’s neighbors in Calabasas, wrote on Twitter that she was also evacuated.
“Horses are finally safe. My children are safe. My home is in jeopardy but... everything with a heartbeat is safe,” she said.
Director Guillermo del Toro tweeted that Bleak House, his museum of horror movie memorabilia, was also in the path of the flames.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
RSS