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California wildfires: nine killed as blaze incinerates town
California wildfires: hundreds of thousands flee deadly blazes
(35 minutes later)
At least nine people have died after a northern California wildfire incinerated most of a town of about 30,000 people, authorities said.
Emergency services in the US are battling to prevent multiple forest fires from sweeping across the state of California, as hundreds of thousands of people, including Hollywood stars, are evacuated from their homes.
Only a day after the fast-moving fire began, the blaze near the town of Paradise had grown to nearly 140 sq miles and had destroyed about 6,500 structures. Three bodies were found outside their homes, one inside a home and several in cars, said the Butte county sheriff, Kory Honea. He said the number was likely to grow.
At least nine people have been confirmed dead, with scores more reported missing in both northern and southern California amid fears the number of fatalities could rise.
“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.”
In Los Angeles County, more than 200,000 people have been placed under mandatory evacuation as the 35,000-acre Woolsey fire threatened 75,000 homes.
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.
The fire broke out on Thursday and quickly jumped a major north-south artery to reach the Santa Monica Mountains towards Malibu, where flames driven by winds gusting up to 50mph raced down hillsides and through canyons toward multi-million dollar homes.
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. Three-quarters of the town was evacuated, the mayor said.
Evacuation orders were issued for the city, which is home to 13,000, among them some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
Southern California wildfires had burned 150 homes and that number would rise, authorities said Friday afternoon. The Hill fire had burned 6,000 acres and wasn’t advancing, but the Woolsey fire a few miles away had doubled in size to 35,000 acres.
Thousands of residents took to the Pacific Coast Highway to head south or took refuge on beaches, along with their horses and other pets.
Winds that drove the flames through hills and canyons north and west of downtown Los Angeles are expected to die down on Saturday. But forecasters expect them to build up again Sunday, reaching 35 mph (56kmh) or higher.
Some of the evacuation orders were for residents within the City of Los Angeles, specifically in the West Hills area.
Donald Trump has issued an emergency declaration providing aid to help state and local firefighters battling blazes in Butte, Ventura and Los Angeles counties. The money will help pay for firefighting aircraft along with shelter, supplies and transportation for the tens of thousands of evacuated residents.
About 500 miles to the north, nine people were found dead in and around the northern California town of Paradise, where more than 6,700 homes and businesses were burned down.
The cause of the blazes was not known. Pacific Gas & Electric Co says it experienced a problem on an electrical transmission line near the site of the northern California fire minutes before the blaze broke out.
The flames descended on Paradise so quickly that many were forced to abandon their cars and run for their lives down the sole road through the mountain town.
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. Paradise is about 180 miles north-east of San Francisco.
“This event was the worst-case scenario,” said Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea. “It was the event we have feared for a long time. Regrettably, not everybody made it out.”
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.
“The fire was so close I could feel it in my car through rolled up windows,” said Rita Miller, who fled Paradise with her mother.
McLean said: “Pretty much the community of Paradise is destroyed. It’s that kind of devastation.”
On the town’s outskirts, Patrick Knuthson, a fourth-generation resident, said only two of the 22 homes that once stood on his street were still there – his own and a neighbour’s.
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 fire burned from one house, to the next house, to the next house until they were pretty much all gone,” Knuthson said. “I lost my home in 2008, and it’s something you can’t really describe until you go through it.”
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.
President Trump blamed the fires on forest mismanagement and threatened to withdraw related federal funding.
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.
“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor,” he wrote in a Twitter post.
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.
“Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments,” Trump added.
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.
Trump’s comments were described as “an absolutely heartless response” by the singer, Katy Perry, who lives in the Hollywood Hills. “There aren’t even politics involved,” she said on Twitter. “Just good American families losing their homes as you tweet, evacuating into shelters.”
“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.
Perry had earlier praised the firefighters who were working to tackle the blaze, writing: “Immense gratitude to all the brave first responders out there putting their lives on the line for so many families.”
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.
Among those forced to flee were Kim Kardashian, who urged people to pray for her home city of Calabasas, near Malibu.
“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.”
“Just landed back home and had one hour to pack up and evacuate our home. I pray everyone is safe,” she wrote on Instagram.
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.
Her husband, the rapper, Kanye West, said their family was safe.
About 20 of the same deputies who were helping to find and rescue people lost their own homes, Honea said.
Will Smith said he was fleeing his home in Calabasas.
“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.
In a post on Instagram, Smith said: “The smoke is really close now and for the first time I can see fire. Our house is right there. We are not in the evacuation zone but I don’t like it so we are going to go.”
Patrick Knuthson, a fourth-generation resident of Paradise, said only two of roughly 22 houses on his street survived.
Lady Gaga revealed her concerns for her property and hailed the firefighters and emergency services as “true heroes”.
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.
She tweeted: “I am thinking so deeply for everyone who is suffering today from these abominable fires & grieving the loss of their homes or loved ones. I’m sitting here with many of you wondering if my home will burst into flames. All we can do is pray together & for each other. God Bless You.”
“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.”
The blaze also threatened parts of nearby Thousand Oaks, where a gunman killed 12 people earlier this week in a shooting rampage.
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.
One Direction star, Niall Horan, urged people to leave the area, writing in a tweet: “If you live in Thousand Oaks/Malibu area, please evacuate. The fires are at 0% containment and are getting more wild as the minutes pass.”
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.”
