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REDDING, Calif. (Reuters) – The toll of a forest fire in northern California has risen to five with the discovery of human remains of a missing elderly woman and her two great-grandchildren. Even though the fire brigades fought to quell the flames that devastated entire neighborhoods.
More than 38,000 people remained under evacuation orders Sunday in and around the town of Redding, about 257 km north of Sacramento. from a fire that destroyed more than 500 buildings and continued to crack largely unchecked on a seventh day.
Carr's Fire, the deadliest and most destructive of nearly 90 forest fires from Texas to Oregon. hectares) of drought-dried vegetation since eruption last Monday.
More than 4,000 structures were threatened by fire, according to authorities.
Sunday weather should not offer any relief from fires. The National Meteorological Service said that as of Saturday evening, an army of some 3,500 firefighters and a squadron of 17 people dropping water were destroyed by high winds and wind gusts of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.7 degrees Celsius). the helicopters had managed to dig buffer lines around only five per cent of the perimeter of the fire.
Firefighters say that the erratic behavior of the fire, fueled by strong winds and three-digit temperatures, has complicated efforts to contain the conflagration. At the height of its fury on Thursday night, the fire was whipped by gale force winds that propelled the flames on the Sacramento River at the west end of Redding, while thousands of residents fled into distress.
The nearby town of Keswick, with a population of about 450 inhabitants, was reduced to ashes and two firefighters were killed.
On Saturday, Redding police said they were looking for 17 people still on the run. Tom Bosenko, Sheriff of Shasta County, later confirmed the discovery of three bodies in a fire-ravaged house in the suburb of Redding
Bosenko said that they had not yet been discovered. The remains of three victims identified by relatives in media reports were James Roberts, his five-year-old sister Emily, and their great-grandmother, Melody Bledsoe, 70.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Bledsoe's family said she was desperately putting a wet blanket over the kids while their house was burning.
The children's mother, Sherry Bledsoe, was quoted by the Sacramento Bee: "My children are dead, can say," as she left the sheriff's office on Saturday.
According to the newspaper's report, Melody Bledsoe's husband, Ed Bledsoe, cried as he remembered trying to return to the family's home Thursday, only to learn that the fire was getting close to them . He told the newspaper that he was talking to the children on the phone while he was running in vain to return in time to save them.
"I talked to them until the fire hit them," he said. "I was trying to reach them, I was trying to go to the fire."
So far this year, the forest fires have burned nearly 4.3 million. ################################################ 39 acres (1.7 million hectares) across the country, less than last year than the average 3.7 million acres (1.5 million hectares) ) for the same period in the last decade. California has been particularly affected by several fierce fires threatening large populated areas.
One of them, the Cranston fire, caused the closure of much of Yosemite National Park last week. Idyllwild in the east of Los Angeles
(Steve Gorman's additional writing and reporting in Los Angeles, additional report by Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Scott Malone in Boston, Brendan O. Brien in Milwaukee and Rich McKay in Atlanta, Edited by Sandra Maler, Richard Pullin and William Maclean)
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