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California's Camp Fire has melted cars and reduced bodies to bone - these images show the horror of the state's deadliest fire ever
California's Camp Fire has melted cars and reduced bodies to bone - these images show the horror of the state's deadliest fire ever
Hilary Brueck,Peter KoteckiNov 14, 2018, 05:59 IST
A Cal Fire firefighter outside a burning home in Magalia, California on November 9, 2018.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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California is in flames to the north and south as the deadly Camp and Woolsey fires rage on.
Both wildfires lit up on Thursday, and have been stoked by dry, windy conditions. The Woolsey Fire has destroyed parts of Malibu and other areas on the outskirts of Los Angeles, while the Camp Fire ravaged the town of Paradise, which is north of Sacramento. That fire has killed at least 42 people - more people than any fire in state history.
Investigators think some sparking power lines could have been the cause of the blaze. Stocks of California's two largest energy companies fell sharply on Monday, the Los Angeles Times reported, as investors worried about where blame for the deadly fire will fall.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the Camp Fire had burned 125,000 acres and was just 30% contained. Hundreds of people are still missing, and fire officials expect it will take weeks to finish dousing the flames. In less than one week, the Camp Fire has already destroyed more structures than any fire California had before it.
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Here's what the affected area of northern California looks like.
The Camp Fire lit up just after 6:30 a.m. Thursday morning. In less than 24 hours, it devoured nearly the entire town of Paradise, growing at a rate of 80 football fields per minute.
At 9:23 a.m. Thursday, the Butte County Sheriff's office sent out frantic tweets warning then ordering residents to get out of the way of the flames. "What pisses me off is I don’t think they told everybody soon enough,” resident Kim Benn said.
"The fire was so close I could feel it in my car through rolled up windows," Rita Miller, who fled Paradise with her disabled mother, told the Associated Press.
“I just kept watering the barn and watering any areas in the barn that caught on fire,” she said. "It's a dangerous situation. I remember my son saying, 'Hey! There's no firefighters. We're on our own here.' I'm like, 'Yeah.' We were definitely on our own."
The blaze was so hot it melted metal. Allyn Pierce, a registered nurse, told The New York Times that he was in his truck sitting in traffic as a wall of fire approached. The registered nurse recorded a goodbye message to his family members, but a bulldozer cleared the way for him to escape just in time.
Instead of getting far away from Paradise, however, Pierce drove to help patients at the local hospital, where he manages the intensive care unit. “It’s completely traumatic,” Pierce said about being trapped in his truck. “When I close my eyes at night, I see fire.”
Erin McLaughlin, who lives a few miles north of Paradise, told the Times that she left her home Thursday morning with her 81-year-old neighbor, Elisabeth Mesones. The two got stuck in traffic outside Paradise and escaped their cars on foot after hearing propane tank explosions nearby.
McLaughlin, Mesones, and roughly 75 other motorists gathered in the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant. “Everything was on fire all around you,” McLaughlin said. “It was the most scary thing I’ve ever seen.” The group escaped after six hours, but the restaurant later burned down.
More than 5,000 fire personnel are fighting the blaze. In addition, 1,418 California inmates are dousing fires around the state. They're not paid for that work.
Fire Captain Steve Millosovich rescued this cage of cats from the Camp Fire in Big Bend. He told the AP that the cage fell off the bed of a pickup truck driving to safety.
Hundreds of residents are still missing.
Teresa Moniz was in the town of Magalia on Thursday when her husband, Albert Moniz, called to say flames were approaching their home in Paradise. Albert Moniz, who is disabled and does not own a cell phone, later called from a friend's house, but his wife has not heard from him since.
Red-flag warnings are in effect across the state, which means the weather is ripe for fires due to high winds and low humidity. This has made fighting the flames extra challenging.
Wildfires are a natural part of California's ecosystems, but they have recently gotten stronger and caused more destruction as the state sees less rain and higher temperatures. Dry, hot conditions, which are partially caused by climate change, are becoming the new normal.
To make the situation worse, native plants such as Chaparral, which is a great fire buffer, have being cut down. "Instead of trying to make the fires adapt to us, we have to create communities and live in situations where we allow the fires to burn around us, not through us," Rich Halsey from the California Chaparral Institute said.
