The death toll from a huge blaze in northern California rose to 42 on Monday, increasing the statewide death toll to 44 and making it the deadliest wildfire in state history.
Thousands of firefighters spent a fifth day digging battle lines to contain the Camp Fire in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada north of Sacramento, while search teams were on a grim mission to recover the dead.
“As of today, an additional 13 human remains have been recovered, which brings the total number to 42,” Sheriff Kory Honea told a news conference.
Photo: AFP
The blaze is “the deadliest wildland fire in California history,” Honea said.
Although it is difficult to be certain due to inconsistencies in record keeping and categorization, the Camp Fire appears to be the deadliest US wildfire in a century — since the Cloquet Fire killed an estimated 1,000 people in Minnesota in 1918.
The Camp Fire is the largest of several infernos that have sent 250,000 people fleeing their homes across the tinder-dry state, with winds of up to 100kph fanning the fast-moving flames.
In addition to the historic loss of life, the Camp Fire blaze is also more destructive than any other on record, having razed 6,500 homes in the town of Paradise, effectively wiping it off the map.
More than 5,100 firefighters from as far as the states of Washington and Texas have been working to halt the advance of the inferno as “mass casualty” search teams backed by anthropologists and a DNA lab pick through the charred ruins to identify remains — sometimes reduced to no more than shards of bone.
“We’re now at a point where we’re going to bring in human remains detector dogs, or what often are referred to as cadaver dogs,” Honea said.
At least 44 people have died in fire zones in north and south California, where acrid smoke has blanketed the sky for miles, the sun barely visible.
US President Donald Trump “declared that a major disaster exists in the state of California and ordered federal aid to supplement state, tribal and local recovery efforts in the areas affected by wildfires,” the White House said in a statement.
The move makes aid available to the state’s fire-hit Butte, Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
On the ground, cars caught in the flames have been reduced to scorched metal skeletons, while piles of debris smolder where houses once stood, an occasional brick wall or chimney remaining.
Glenn Simmons, 64, told reporters in the town of Chico that he had been sleeping in his car since Thursday, unable to find a space in a shelter.
“I was planning on maybe moving out of state, or into southern California... Everything is burned up. I have my clothes and I have a backpack, and that’s pretty much it,” he said.
The Camp Fire has reduced about 45km2 of Butte County’s forested hills mostly to charred wasteland — an area which has not seen rainfall of more than 1cm in more than 30 weeks.
It was 25 percent contained, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
Three firefighters have been injured in the effort to quell the blaze’s advance.
At the southern end of the state, another three firefighters have been injured battling the Woolsey Fire, which has devoured mansions and mobile homes alike in the coastal celebrity resort of Malibu.
The blaze is similar in size to the Camp Fire, but has been much less destructive, and the death toll has been limited to two victims found in a vehicle on a private driveway.
While some Malibu-area residents were allowed to return home late on Sunday, the city of Calabasas, just northeast of coastal Malibu, came under evacuation orders.
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
ICE DISPUTE: The Trump administration has sought to paint Good as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ insisting that the agent who fatally shot her was acting in self-defense Thousands of demonstrators chanting the name of the woman killed by a US federal agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, took to the city’s streets on Saturday, amid widespread anger at use of force in the immigration crackdown of US President Donald Trump. Organizers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the US under the slogan “ICE, Out for Good” — referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is drawing growing opposition over its execution of Trump’s effort at mass deportations. The slogan is also a reference to Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother shot dead on Wednesday in her
RSS