Five dead as California wildfire

REDDING, Calif. (Reuters) – The death toll of a Northern California wildfire rose to the death of a woman neighborhoods.

More than 38,000 people left under evacuation orders on the city of Redding, about 160 miles (257 km) north of the state of the capital Sacramento, from a blaze that has destroyed more than 500 buildings and continued to rage largely unchecked into a seventh day.

The Carr Fire, the deadliest and most destructive of nearly 90 wildfires burning from Texas to Oregon, has charred 89,194 acres (36,095 acres) of drought-parched vegetation since erupting last Monday.

More than 5,012 structures were threatened by the fire, officials said. The destroyed flames 517 structures and damaged 135.

Fahrenheit (37.7 Celsius) with low humidity and gusty winds, the National Weather Service said.

An army of some 3,500 firefighting personnel and a squadron of 17 water-dropping helicopters just managed to carve buffer lines around just 5 percent of the fire's perimeter as of Sunday.

Fire officials say the erratic behavior of the blaze, stoked by high winds and triple-digit temperatures, has complicated efforts to contain the conflagration.

President Donald Trump on Saturday declared the fire an emergency, authorizing federal funds for disaster relief efforts.

At the height of its fury on Thursday night, the fire is whipped into a storm-like frenzy by force-gale-force that drove flames across the Sacramento River into the western end of Redding, as thousands of residents fled for their lives in a chaotic evacuation.

The nearby town of Keswick, with a population of about 450, was reduced to cinders, and two firefighters were killed.

On Saturday, Redding Police said they were searching for 17 people still unaccounted for two days afterward.

FIRE-RAVAGED HOME

Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko later confirmed the discovery of three bodies at a fire-ravaged home on the outskirts of Redding.

Bosenko said they had not yet been positively identified identified by related in news media reports as 4-year-old James Roberts, his 5-year-old sister Emily and their great-grandmother, Melody Bledsoe, 70.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Bledsoe's family said she desperately put a wet blanket over the children's home burned.

The children's mother, Sherry Bledsoe, was quoted by the Sacramento Bee as saying, "My kids are deceased, that's all I can say," as she left the sheriff's office on Saturday.

According to the newspaper's account, Melody Bledsoe's husband, Ed Bledsoe, we have read about it to get back to the family's home after he had left to run an errand on Thursday, only to learn that the fire was closing in on them . He told the newspaper that he spoke to the children on the phone he was in vain to return to save them.

"I talked to them until the fire got them," he was quoted as saying. "

So far this year, wildfires have scorched almost 4.3 million acres (1.7 million hectares) across the country, less than last year but still higher than the 3.7 million-acre (1.5 million-hectare) average for the same period over the last decade. California has been particularly fierce with several fierce menacing blazes wide populated areas.

One of those, the Cranston fire, prompted a rare closure of Yosemite National Park last week, while another forced mass evacuations from the mountain resort community of Idyllwild, east of Los Angeles.