Camp Fire: Major storm threatens flash flooding, search efforts in Paradise

Nov. 20--PARADISE -- The heavy rains also could imperil the meticulous efforts of finding and identifying human remains from the deadly Camp Fire, increasing the possibility that loved ones still missing may never be found.

The National Weather Service on Monday issued a flash flood watch for the region from Wednesday through Friday, when incoming storms are expected to deliver the most rainfall since April 7, when 5.7 inches were recorded in Paradise, National Weather Service forecaster Johnnie Powell said Monday.

"It's going to help with the fire, but it's going to hamper search and rescue," he said.

Anyone in the burn area should either leave or be ready to go, Powell said, and Butte County officials were warning residents who have returned to the fire zone or live downstream to pack evacuation kits.

So far, almost all of the victims of the fire have been recovered from within what's left of houses and vehicles, but authorities worry about the rivers of ash and debris triggered by the oncoming storms hindering the massive search effort.

"The ones that have the potential of washing away are the ones who may have run into a field or a drainage ditch," Joe Moses, a Monterey County sheriff's deputy and commander of the Camp Fire search operation, said Monday. "But it's a pretty low potential."

The remains of two more victims were recovered Monday, bringing the death toll in the historic blaze to 79. The number of people missing continues to decline, though, with 669 people unaccounted for, down from 993 on Sunday. A total of 1,669 people reported missing have been confirmed as found, according to the Butte County Sheriff's Office.

The wind-whipped Camp Fire barreled through this Butte County town 90 miles north of Sacramento on the morning of Nov. 8, leaving a path of destruction and despair never before seen in California.

As of Monday, the blaze had burned more than 151,272 acres, destroyed nearly 12,000 homes and was only 70 percent contained. According to Cal Fire, full containment is expected by Nov. 30. While the rain should help slow the fire, it will surely raise the misery index for crews working on the largest search of its kind ever in California, Moses said.

"When the ash becomes wet it becomes really sticky and harder to search through," he said.

The good news is that washing away some of the ash may help cadaver dogs locate remains more easily, said Cal Fire spokesman Rick Crawford, who is working in Paradise with search crews.

In some cases, where the fire burned especially hot, there is little left to find except teeth or skull fragments. And some remains are too badly burned to extract DNA, said Stephen Meer from ANDE Rapid DNA, a Massachusetts-based company that has set up shop in Chico to test and identify remains against the DNA of relatives of the missing.

"There's a fine point between ash and bone," Meer said in a recent interview.

The grim deliveries are often made in paper bags -- instead of traditional plastic body bags, which are too big for all that remains.

Since the fire tore through this ridgetop town of 26,000, more than 500 volunteer searchers from 38 California counties have been sifting through leveled homes and melted vehicles. They are joined by another hundred specialized anthropologists and coroners who can more easily tell the difference between human and animal bones.

The effort is becoming more laborious. Victims found in the open near homes and vehicles were the first ones discovered. Now, 11 days after the fire, crews are pulling off collapsed roofs, removing fallen debris and sifting carefully through the wreckage.

"It's just taking a lot more work, so it's slowed it down," Fresno Battalion Chief Brian Price, who is stationed in Paradise, said Monday. "Before, we were able to cover a lot of ground quickly, but now we're going lot by lot by lot. It's much more thorough."

Before the fire, city officials divided the town into 14 evacuation zones, which search teams are now using to methodically comb through. They wanted to clear areas that could be repopulated more easily first, Price said, to allow people to return, if only just to view the damage to their homes.

Searchers look for clues at each location.

"There are a lot of mobile homes where there are vehicles still in the driveway," Paradise Police Det. Gary Vrooman said, "which leads me to believe they didn't make it out."

They also look for signs that someone may have tried to run away from the flames -- an open door on an incinerated car, a creek near an abandoned vehicle.

It's not always clear what happened to people after they abandoned their cars, said Cal Fire's Crawford. His team came across a pair of cars that obviously collided. Where did the occupants go as they fled for their lives?

"We just take the area and literally search every inch of it," he said. "We turn over every building, every trash can, open up every door, even if it's to a warehouse, a Starbucks coffee (shop), another home," he said. "Because although the homeowner may not live there, someone may have sought refuge there."

The search teams try to put themselves in the mind set of someone trying to frantically escape, said Moses, the commander of the search operation.

"You look up, look around and imagine there's a fire coming," he said. "What would I do? Where would I run? Oh, there's a swimming pool or grasslands or a gully."

It's those gullies that may become the scene of dangerous "debris flows" with the incoming storms, said forecaster James Matthews from the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

"If you're on a steep hillside and heavy rain falls on a burn scar area, you could get all the loose timber or ash, anything can just start sliding down slope and it could be like rivers of mud and other types of debris," Mathews said. "That would pose a problem or a danger to people who are involved in safety there on these fires."

The rains and temperatures dipping into the 30s also will be difficult for those who pitched tents in the grassy field next to the Walmart parking lot in Chico. Several volunteers there were trying to encourage people to seek shelter with the Red Cross evacuation centers, though many refused.

"That's not our call" to tell people to go elsewhere, said volunteer Mike Martini.

Instead, volunteers are bringing in tarps to keep dry and wooden pallets to raise tents off the soon-to-be soggy field.

"My family is all in houses," volunteer Dave Foster said. "We have friends all over, so we're blessed. Many of these people not so. They don't have renters' insurance. It's going to be chaos for a while."

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