8,000 firefighters battle California inferno

One of the fire’s victims was an ailing woman whose body was found in bed in a burned-out house in Concow, near Paradise. Ellen Walker, who was in her early 70s, was home alone when the fire struck on Thursday, according to Nancy Breeding, a family friend   

Authorities have reported six additional deaths in a Northern California, raising the death toll to 29 and making it the deadliest wildfire on record in California history.   
Butte County Sheriff Cory Honea said the human remains recovered on Sunday included five bodies found at homes and one in a vehicle in Paradise.   

Honea said the devastation was so complete in some neighbourhoods that ‘it’s very difficult to determine whether or not there may be human remains there’.   ‘In some cases, the only remains we are able to recover are bones or bone fragments,’ Honea said.  He also announced that 228 people remain unaccounted for since the fire began Thursday and incinerated the foothill town.   

The statewide total of deaths from wildfires reached 31.  One of the fire’s victims was an ailing woman whose body was found in bed in a burned-out house in Concow, near Paradise.   

Ellen Walker, who was in her early 70s, was home alone when the fire struck on Thursday, according to Nancy Breeding, a family friend.  The 29 deaths matched the deadliest single fire on record, a 1933 blaze in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, though a series of wildfires in Northern California wine country last fall killed 44 people and destroyed more than 5,000 homes.   

Gov Jerry Brown asked President Donald Trump to declare a major disaster to bolster the emergency response and help residents recover.   

Trump has blamed ‘poor’ forest management for the fires. Brown told a press briefing that federal and state governments must do more forest management but said that’s not the source of the problem.   
Daily Mail, 12 
November 2018