California's Camp Fire has melted cars and reduced bodies to bone - these images show the horror of the state's deadliest fire ever
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.
With a death toll of at least 42, the Camp Fire is now the deadliest wildfire in California history.
Source: Business Insider
"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.
Source: Associated Press
Anita Waters, who escaped her mobile home in Paradise, told the Times that she saw cars in flames with people still inside them as she left.
Source: New York Times
Authorities warned that the Camp Fire's body count could continue to climb, though they hope it doesn't.
Source: Business Insider
Cathy Fallon told the AP that the fire hit her house like a "big tsunami." She managed to save her 14 horses and barn using a hose.
Source: 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."
Source: Associated Press
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.
Source: The New York Times
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.”
Source: Business Insider
All the patients from the hospital where Pierce works made it out safely, but the building burned.
Source: CBS News
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.
Source: The New York Times
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.
Source: The New York Times
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.
Source: KQED
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.
Source: Los Angeles Times
The Butte County fire chief said they haven't had any rain in the area since May, and there's none in the forecast, either.
Source: Associated Press
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.
Source: Twitter
Firefighters don't expect the blaze to be completely extinguished until the end of November.
Source: Cal Fire
Some rescue crews are searching for bodies. But sometimes they only recover a few small remains of a fire victim to put in a body bag.
Other times, only bone fragments are left among the charred remains of a home.
A rapid DNA-analysis system and cadaver dogs are on the way to help identify victims.
Source: Associated Press
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.
Source: Business Insider
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.
Source: California Chaparral Institute, USGS Video
The wildfires have also led to dangerous breathing conditions that extend for hundreds of miles.
People in and around the San Francisco Bay Area are breathing air that the US government calls "unhealthy."
Source: Business Insider
Fire experts say the term “wildfire season” has lost its meaning, since fires can essentially break out during any season now in California.
Source: Business Insider
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