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California wildfires: five people found dead in their cars near Paradise California wildfires: five people found dead in their cars near Paradise
(about 4 hours later)
Northern California officials say investigators have found five people dead in vehicles that were torched by the flames of a ferocious wildfire. Five people were found dead in their burned-out vehicles after a northern California wildfire incinerated most of a town of about 30,000 people with flames that moved so fast there was nothing firefighters could do, authorities said Friday.
The Butte county sheriff’s office said on Friday the victims were found in the same area in the town of Paradise, 180 miles north-east of San Francisco. The fire has grown to nearly 110 square miles. Only a day after it began, the blaze near the town of Paradise had grown to nearly 110 square miles and was burning completely out of control.
One hundred military police are headed to the area to help evacuate people, a California national guard official said. “There was really no firefight involved,” Capt Scott McLean of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said, explaining that crews gave up attacking the flames and instead helped people get out alive. “These firefighters were in the rescue mode all day yesterday.”
Meanwhile, residents of the beachside city of Malibu in southern California have been ordered to evacuate as another of three fast-moving wildfires raged in California on Friday, forcing 175,000 people from their homes across the region, including many near a city that was still reeling from a mass shooting. With fires also burning in Southern California , state officials put the total number of people forced from their homes at 157,000. Evacuation orders included the entire city of Malibu, which is home to 13,000, among them some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
One of the fires broke out on Thursday north-west of Los Angeles and roared south, jumping the US 101 freeway early on Friday and sweeping into the Santa Monica mountains. Meanwhile, Thousand Oaks, reeling from the tragedy of a mass shooting was under a siege of a different sort Friday as raging wildfires on both sides of the city forced evacuations and shut down part of the main freeway through town.
Malibu has about 13,000 residents and lies along 21 miles (34km) of coast at the southern foot of the mountain range. Flames driven by powerful winds torched dozens of hillside homes in Southern California, burning parts of tony Calabasas and mansions in Malibu and forcing tens of thousands of people including some celebrities to flee as the fire marched across the Santa Monica mountains toward the sea. The cause of the blazes was not known.
The Los Angeles county fire department tweeted that the fire was headed to the ocean, punctuating the message with the declaration: “Imminent threat!” In Northern California, when Paradise was evacuated, the order set off a desperate exodus in which many motorists got stuck in gridlocked traffic and abandoned their vehicles to flee on foot. People reported seeing much of the community go up in flames, including homes, supermarkets, businesses, restaurants, schools and a retirement center.
The director of the California governor’s office of emergency services said fires across California have forced 157,000 people from their homes. Mark Ghilarducci provided the figure at a news briefing on Friday. Rural areas fared little better. Many homes have propane tanks that were exploding amid the flames. “They were going off like bombs,” said Karen Auday, who escaped to a nearby town.
Fires are burning in northern and southern California. McLean estimated that the lost buildings numbered in the thousands in Paradise, about 180 miles north-east of San Francisco.
Voluntary evacuations of 75,000 homes had already been called for because of the Woolsey fire that affected parts of Thousand Oaks, the site of a shooting massacre this week. Thousand Oaks is a 30-minute drive north of Malibu. “Pretty much the community of Paradise is destroyed. It’s that kind of devastation,” he said.
The Los Angeles and Ventura county fire departments say multiple buildings have been destroyed or damaged, but exact numbers were not available early on Friday. The massive blaze spread north Friday, prompting officials to order the evacuation of Stirling City and Inskip, two communities north of Paradise along the Sierra Nevada foothills.
The flames are being driven by southern California’s notorious Santa Ana winds, which blow from the north-east toward the coast. The wind-driven flames also spread to the west and reached Chico, a city of 90,000 people. Firefighters were able to stop the fire at the edge of the city, Cal Fire Capt Bill Murphy said.
A third fire has been burning in the Santa Rosa Valley east of Camarillo, west of Simi Valley near Newbury Park and Thousand Oaks. By Thursday evening, it had scorched up to 7,000 acres and sent residents of more than 1,200 homes fleeing, the Los Angeles Times reported. There were no signs of life Friday on the road to Paradise except for the occasional bird chirp. A thick, yellow haze from the fire hung in the air and gave the appearance of twilight in the middle of the day.
The northern California fire, which devastated a town of 27,000, is moving north and officials have ordered people in two Sierra Nevada foothill communities to leave their homes. Evacuees from Paradise sat in stunned silence Friday outside a Chico church where they took refuge the night before. They all had harrowing tales of a slow-motion escape from a fire so close they could feel the heat inside their vehicles as they sat stuck in a terrifying traffic jam.
The Butte county sheriff’s office said an evacuation order was issued on Friday for the small communities of Stirling City and Inskip, north of Paradise, where thousands of homes were destroyed. When the order came to evacuate, it was like the entire town of 27,000 residents decided to leave at once, they said. Fire surrounded the evacuation route, and drivers panicked. Some crashed and others left their vehicles by the roadside.
Cal Fire’s Bill Murphy said winds have calmed down in the valley but that there are “shifting, erratic winds” with speeds of up to 45mph (72km/h) along ridge tops. “It was just a wall of fire on each side of us, and we could hardly see the road in front of us,” police officer Mark Bass said.
The blaze that started on Thursday morning east of Paradise and decimated the town also spread to the west. A nurse called Rita Miller on Thursday morning, telling her she had to get her disabled mother, who lives a few blocks away, and flee Paradise immediately. Miller jumped in her boyfriend’s rickety pickup truck, which was low on gas and equipped with a bad transmission. She instantly found herself stuck in gridlock.
It reached the edge of Chico, a city of 90,000 people on Thursday night. Murphy said firefighters were able to stop the fire at the edge of the city, where evacuation orders remained in place. “I was frantic,” she said. After an hour of no movement, she abandoned the truck and decided to try her luck on foot. While walking, a stranger in the traffic jam rolled down her window and asked Miller if she needed help. Miller at first scoffed at the notion of getting back in a vehicle. Then she reconsidered, thinking: “I’m really scared. This is terrifying. I can’t breathe. I can’t see, and maybe I should humble myself and get in this woman’s car.”
Concerned friends and family posted anxious messages on Twitter and other sites, saying they were looking for loved ones, particularly seniors who lived at retirement homes or alone.
About 20 of the same deputies who were helping to find and rescue people lost their own homes, Sheriff Kory Honea said.
“There are times when you have such rapid-moving fires ... no amount of planning is going to result in a perfect scenario, and that’s what we had to deal with here,” Honea told the Action News Network.
Kelly Lee called shelters looking for her husband’s 93-year-old grandmother, Dorothy Herrera, who was last heard from Thursday morning. Herrera, who lives in Paradise with her 88-year-old husband, Lou, left a frantic voicemail around 9.30am saying they needed to get out.
“We never heard from them again,” Lee said. “We’re worried sick. ... They do have a car, but they both are older and can be confused at times.”
In Thousand Oaks, flames creeping down a hillside were visible from the teen center on Janns Road named for the family that originally developed the hilly terrain covered with majestic California oaks into what has become a bedroom community of 130,000.
Evacuees described harrowing escapes from flames that picked up unexpectedly Thursday afternoon.
At the Vallecito mobile home park for seniors, the fire came so quickly that residents had no time to gather medications and documents. With flames bearing down, firefighters carried people from homes and put them in empty seats of their neighbors’ cars, said Carol Napoli, 74.
Napoli left with her friend, the friend’s son and her mother who is in her 90s and had to leave behind her oxygen tank.
“We drove through flames to get out. They had us in like a caravan,” Napoli said. “My girlfriend was driving. She said, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’ Her son said, ‘Mom, you have to.”
WildfiresWildfires
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