Deaths found in houses and cars burned: the number of fires in northern California raises to 29 and 230 missing

The dead were found in burning cars, in the burning ruins of their homes or beside their vehicles, apparently overrun with smoke and flames before they could jump behind the wheel and escape. In some cases, there were only charred bone fragments so small that coroner's investigators used a wire basket to sift and sort them.

At least 29 people were confirmed dead in the fire that turned the city of Paradise, northern California, into a hell on earth, matching the deadliest fire in the history of the city. State, and body research continued on Monday.

According to the sheriff's calculations, nearly 230 people were reported missing four days after the city's 27,000-strong fire and virtually wiped it out with flames so violent that they melted the city. metal cars. The dead were so badly burned that the authorities used a mobile DNA lab and consulted forensic anthropologists to help them identify them.

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More and more exhausted and discouraged, the friends and relatives of the missing hospitals, police, shelters and coroner's office have disappeared in the hope of knowing what has happened to their loved ones.

Tad Teays, who fled Paradise in front of the fire, waited for her 90-year-old mother with dementia to live about a kilometer from him in town.

"By the time I evacuated and tried to go home, this area had already been burned," he said. "I do not know where she is. We called shelters, we went to shelters and filed some reports of missing persons "

Megan James of Newfoundland, Canada, searched via Twitter from across the continent for information about her aunt and uncle, whose home in Paradise had burned and whose vehicles were still there. On Monday, she asked on Twitter that someone take up the positions in charge, claiming that she was "so emotionally and mentally exhausted."

"I need to sleep and cry," James added. "Just pray. Please, please. "

The fire was part of an outbreak of forest fires at both ends of the state. Together, they were held responsible for 31 deaths, including two in the famed celebrity town of Malibu in southern California, where firefighters appeared to be gaining ground in the fire that ravaged at least 370 people. square kilometers (370 square kilometers). structures.

Some of the thousands of people forced to leave their homes as a result of the fire were allowed to return and the authorities reopened the American 101, a major highway crossing the Los Angeles County Fire District and from Ventura.

The celebrities of Malibu and the inhabitants of mobile homes in the nearby mountains were slowly learning if their house had been spared or burned to ashes.

In total, more than 8,000 firefighters across the state fought fires that burned over 840 square kilometers (325 square miles), with flames feeding on dry scrub and driven by blowtorch winds.

In northern California, firefighters are still fighting the fire that has erased Paradise. Gusts of wind reached 64 km / h at night, with flames leaping over 300 feet on Lake Oroville. The fire has reached 303 square kilometers and is controlled to 25%, announced the authorities.

On Sunday, a team of firefighters ransacking Paradise's homes discovered two sets of remains in the smoking ruins of a house and had placed pieces of calcined bone in body bags. One of the sets may have come from a dog, not a human, but the bones were so burned that they would require further badysis in a forensic laboratory.

Some of the remains consisted of fragments that most people would not even notice in the ashes to the ankle.

There were tiny signs of a certain sense of order coming back to paradise on Monday and anonymous gestures aimed at bringing together the spirits of firefighters who have been working for days in a wasteland covered with ashes.

Large American flags stuck in the ground bordered both sides of the road at the city limits, and temporary stop signs appeared overnight at major intersections. The power lines that had blocked the roads were cut off and the crews fell trees burned with chainsaws.

The 29 dead in northern California corresponded to the deadliest fire ever recorded, a 1933 fire at Griffith Park in Los Angeles. A series of wildfires in northern California's wine region last fall killed 44 people and destroyed more than 5,000 homes.