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CHICO, Calif. – It's been 12 days since Christina Taft began the frenetic search for her mother, Victoria, who refused to evacuate their heavenly home as the flames approached, and probably six days her mother.
She has still not received confirmation of her mother's death and is frustrated with what she considers to be a lack of communication from Butte County officials.
"They said they found leftovers, that they did not say it, they will not confirm it all the time," Taft said Monday.
With 77 people killed in the deadliest fire in California for at least a century, there are still 1,000 amazing names on the missing list. While it was down by nearly 1,300 the day before, it is inaccurate and incomplete, progress has been slow and the many days of uncertainty add to stress.
More than a dozen people are marked as "unknown", with no first name or last name. In some cases, names are listed twice or more under different spellings. Others are confirmed dead and their names have not yet been removed.
Survivors and relatives of fire victims in northern California use social media to spread the word: in some cases, to report that their loved ones were safe; in others, ask for help.
"Aunt Dorothy is still missing – the sheriff's office has been confusing about where she was because she was removed from the list," a man wrote on Facebook on Monday.
"I have an uncle and two cousins with whom I have not been able to get in touch," wrote a woman on Facebook, with their names. "Any information would be appreciated."
Butte County Sheriff, Kory Honea, said that he had published the rough and incomplete list in the hope that people would contact the authorities to tell them that they are fine. He called it "raw data" compiled from phone calls, emails and other reports.
"We have published the list, it will fluctuate, it will increase, it will go down because the situation is fluctuating," Honea said Monday. "My point of view about this is that I would rather get the information and start working to find out who is missing and who is not, I would put progress above perfection."
The authorities also collected information from the first hours of the disaster, when the fire stopped mobile phone calls and thousands of people fled, some to a safe shelter hundreds of kilometers away.
Honea said his office was working with the Red Cross to report on people entering and leaving shelters. The evacuees also help the authorities reduce the list, sometimes by chance.
Robert James Miles, who lost his Paradise trailer in the fire, was living in a shelter in Chico, where people published the names of those they had not heard of. Miles said that he had warned an employee of the Red Cross Saturday that he had recognized eight names on the board, friends that he knew well to go.
"Two of them were in the shelter," he says with a chuckle.
Owen and Phyllis Suihkonen understand chaos. Their families are scattered after losing their homes as a result of a fire, as are their two grown children.
Phyllis Suihkonen, 69, said she spotted the names of two friends on the missing persons list and does not know if they are safe. But his daughter saw names of friends who are well and called the sheriff's officials to let them know.
"I'm worried," says Phyllis. "But as I said, there were the names of other friends on the list who were taken into account and removed."
Meanwhile, those looking for the bodies were in a race against the weather, rain being announced for Wednesday. Precipitation could help extinguish the flames, but could also hinder research by washing away fragmentary remains and turning the ashes into a thick paste.
The fire, which burned at least 606 square kilometers and destroyed nearly 12,000 homes, would have been controlled by two thirds on Monday.
The island of Alcatraz, the San Francisco cable cars, the Oakland Zoo and other attractions in the San Francisco Bay Area were closed Monday due to the smoke caused by the fire, about 290 km. Over the weekend, several San Francisco museums offered free entry to allow visitors to entertain themselves inside.
California's Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said it was "way too early" to estimate the damage caused by the forest fire. But to give you an idea, he said the fires that destroyed 6,800 homes last year resulted in losses of $ 12.6 billion.
"The process will be long and painful," he said.
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Har reported from San Francisco.
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Associated Press reporters Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento, Calif., And Paul Elias and Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco also contributed to this report.
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