- The death toll from the recent California wildfires has risen to 91. Around 200 people are still missing.
- The Camp Fire in Northern California destroyed an entire town in less than a day and killed at least 88 people, making it by far the deadliest fire in the state’s history.
- Both the Camp Fire and the Woolsey Fire on the outskirts of Los Angeles are now 100% contained.
- California wildfires are becoming so frequent and pervasive that local officials say there’s almost no need for the term “wildfire season” anymore.
Two wildfires that scorched 250,000 acres in California are 100% contained after raging for over two weeks. But the death toll from Northern California’s Camp Fire, the state’s deadliest fire on record, continues to climb.
Authorities announced Sunday that the Camp Fire was 100% contained. The blaze scorched 153,336 acres – an area larger than the city of Chicago – and killed 88 people. As of Monday evening, at least 200 others were still missing, according to the Butte County Sheriff’s Office.
The search for bodies continues. Widespread rains over the weekend brought some relief to firefighters, but the wet, muddy conditions are complicating efforts to locate human remains.
The other deadly wildfire in California, the Woolsey Fire, is also 100% contained, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. The flames burned 96,949 acres in the hills around Los Angeles. Residents of Malibu and other LA suburbs whose houses were in the path of the fire have begun to return home, some to charred shells.
Two people were killed in the Woolsey Fire on November 9, and a third body was found in a burned home in Agoura Hills on November 14, bringing the combined death toll from both the Woolsey and Camp fires to 91.
This year to date, 7,957 fires have burned across California, fueled by hot, dry conditions and aggressive winds. The causes of the Woolsey and Camp Fires are still under investigation, but sparking power lines may have played a role in the Camp Fire.
President Donald Trump visited the wreckage from the Camp Fire in Paradise, California on November 17 and described the area as "total devastation."
The Camp Fire was the deadliest and most destructive in California's history
The Camp Fire moved at a deadly pace - about 80 football fields per minute - after breaking out on the morning of November 8. The 27,000-resident town of Paradise was in flames within hours.
That speed made successful evacuations nearly impossible.
"I was sitting in my car just screaming, waiting to die," Paradise resident Jackie Rabbit told INSIDER. She ditched her car and started running. She didn't even notice her bloody knee or injured ankle as she raced to safety.
At least six people burned to death in their cars as they tried to escape, the Butte County Sheriff's Office said.
"The fire was so close I could feel it in my car through rolled-up windows," Rita Miller, who fled Paradise with her mother, told The Associated Press.
Before this, California's deadliest blaze was a 1933 fire that broke out in LA's Griffith Park. It killed 29 laborers who were caught unprepared to battle the flames. The Camp Fire's death toll is almost triple that.
More than 13,900 homes and 500 businesses were destroyed, along with over 4,200 other buildings, making the Camp Fire the most destructive wildfire in California's history in terms of structures lost.
You can learn more about damage from the Camp Fire on Cal Fire's Structure Status Map and see evacuations on the Camp Fire Evacuation Map.
Searching for human remains among the ash and rain is tricky
Coroner search teams are looking for victims in Paradise, where rain began to fall for the first time in months over the weekend.
The rain helped firefighters, but it has made searching for remains more difficult. More than 800 volunteers spent their Thanksgiving holiday helping to look for victims, the Associated Press reported.
After the fire receded from the Paradise area, more than 450 people were dispatched to look for human remains in the debris, according to the AP. Abandoned cars in driveways were taken as a potential sign that residents might not have escaped.
Sifting through the ashes, the teams sometimes recover only the partial remains of a victim to place in a body bag.
"The long bag looks almost empty as it's carefully carried out of the ruins and placed in a black hearse," the AP's Gillian Flaccus reported from Paradise.
The Butte County Sheriff's office is working with anthropologists from California State University at Chico to help identify bone fragments among ash in the area. Some residents have given cheek swabs to help officials identify their relatives' remains.
You can register yourself as safe or search for loved ones who are missing using the Red Cross' "Safe and Well" list online.
Federal money is arriving, but Trump incorrectly blamed a lack of raking for the fires
Governor-elect Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in Butte County the day the fire broke out and sent a letter to President Donald Trump and the Federal Emergency Management Agency asking for federal assistance.
Trump approved some federal assistance for the California fires on November 9 and said on November 12 that he approved an "expedited request for a Major Disaster Declaration," which allows people whose homes or workplaces were hit by the Woolsey or Camp Fires to apply for federal assistance.
But on Twitter, Trump blamed the fires on poor forest management and threatened that there may be "no more Fed payments." (The federal government oversees more than 40% of California's land.) When visiting, Trump also criticized Californians for not doing more raking.
"I was watching the firemen the other day, and they were raking areas - they were raking areas where the fire was," Trump said on Fox News Sunday. "That should have been all raked out and cleaned out," he added. "You wouldn't have the fire."
Trump suggested that's how Finland prevents forest fires, but the president of Finland said it's not true.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said in a release that federal disaster assistance for the fire victims "can include grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses, and other programs to help individuals and business owners recover from the effects of the disaster."
Over $20 million in federal aid has been distributed so far, according to the agency, mostly in the form of hotel vouchers and other housing assistance.
The aid is much needed among fire victims who lost everything. Troy Miller, a Butte County resident, was camping in a truck next to the remains of his house in Concow.
"I'm alive and I'm still up here," Miller told the Associated Press on November 19. "There are plenty of other people worse off than I. I've got a lot of faith in God. I think things will be OK."
Smoke from the fires traveled hundreds of miles and made San Francisco air unhealthy to breathe for weeks
Smoke from the Camp Fire made it difficult for people in many parts of Northern California to breathe for nearly two weeks. Soot and chemicals released from the flames blanketed wide swaths of the state in a gray haze.
In the days after the fires broke out, the Environmental Protection Agency described the air throughout much of the Bay Area as "unhealthy" or "very unhealthy" to breathe.
Federal air monitors suggested that residents limit time outside and avoid outdoor exercise. San Francisco public schools shuttered their doors on November 16, and many museums opened their doors admission-free to help people find indoor activities.
The San Francisco Air Quality Index, which measures the number of dangerously small pollutants in the air, is now back to normally healthy numbers.
The Woolsey fire burned nearly 97,000 acres near LA and killed three people
The Woolsey Fire, fueled by fierce Santa Ana winds, destroyed 1,500 structures, mostly homes.
As the winds died down, firefighters got a boost fighting the flames. The fire was 100% contained on November 21, and the red-flag warnings that were in effect around Southern California when the flames began have expired.
Three people died in the Woolsey Fire. Two burned bodies were found in a car in Malibu near Mulholland Highway, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said, while a third victim was discovered in the wreckage of a home in Agoura Hills.
At its peak, the fire forced over 275,000 people from their homes. Carol Napoli, who lives at the Vallecito mobile-home park for seniors in Newbury Park, told the AP that the flames approached the park so fast that her mother didn't have time to grab her oxygen tank before they bolted in a car.
"We drove through flames to get out," Napoli said, adding: "My girlfriend was driving. She said, 'I don't know if I can do this.' ... Her son said, 'Mom you have to - you have to drive through the flames.'"
The fire threatened mobile homes and mansions alike. Celebrities including Gerard Butler, Miley Cyrus, and Neil Young lost their houses.
More than 80% of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, the country's largest urban national park, burned, according to the Los Angeles Times. Flames and smoke sent bobcats and mountain lions in the area scampering.
The blaze also destroyed the storied filming location of Paramount Ranch, where the shows "Westworld" and "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" were shot.
You can view current fire perimeters, evacuation updates, and shelter and donation information on the Ventura County Emergency Information site, the Ventura County Recovers site, and LA County's Woolsey Fire site.
Both the Woolsey Fire and another small fire, the Hill Fire, threatened the town of Thousand Oaks, where residents were already reeling from a mass shooting that left 12 people dead.
A resident named Cynthia Ball told the AP it was "like 'welcome to hell.'"
The LA County website says: "If you are affected by the Woolsey or Hill fires, the Thousand Oaks mass shooting, or both, you can call the Disaster Distress Helpline at 1-800-985-5990 or text 'TalkWithUs' to 66746 for emotional support and resources."
Wildfires are no longer limited to one season
The flames in Southern California have been fueled by hot, dry conditions and spread by Santa Ana winds, which tend to blow in from the desert in the fall months.
Read more: Why wildfire season is getting longer and stronger
As the LA Fire Department's Erik Scott pointed out on Twitter, some houses are better protected from fires than others, since green vegetation can help keep back flames.
Wildfire season in California technically runs from late summer through the fall. But as the planet heats up, higher-than-average temperatures and drought conditions are becoming more common. Meanwhile, developers continue to build homes in places that are naturally prone to wildfires.
"Whether it is to allow a rock star to build on a ridgeline in Malibu or a manufactured-home community that nestles into the foothills, the decision is the same and the consequences are the same," Char Miller, the director of environmental analysis at Pomona College, told the Times.
Fire officials in the state are now acknowledging that wildfires may not be limited to any specific season.
Michelle Mark, Bryan Logan, and David Choi contributed reporting.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
