James Woods uses Twitter account to help families find Camp Fire survivors

Nov. 09--James Woods has won acclaim playing villainous characters in films and TV, but more recently he's become a villain to liberals for regularly going on Twitter to trumpet his conservative politics and his support for President Trump.

But on Thursday, the actor ditched politics and played the role of social media hero by turning his sometimes controversial Twitter account, @RealJamesWoods, into a site to help families search for loved ones missing in the devastating Camp Fire in Butte County.

Tens of thousands of residents raced Thursday to escape the deadly wildfire which had burned 20,000 acres, destroyed thousands of structures in Paradise and was only 20 percent contained as of Thursday night.

Starting around 1 p.m. Thursday, Woods, 71, reposted the tweet of someone looking for their handicapped father, spreading the message to his 1.84 million Twitter followers, the Redding Record Searchlight reported.

What followed was an influx of heart-wrenching tweets from people looking for family members or pets.

Woods was back at it early Friday morning, sharing a photo from someone looking for his grandparents and from a woman looking for her mother-in-law who didn't make it out of the community of Magalia safely with other relatives.

Woods tweeted to his "wonderful followers": "I want to thank you for your extraordinary efforts tonight connecting people with lost loved ones in the terrible #CampFire. Your thousands of retweets of invaluable information literally saved lives. God bless you all. #CampFire #CampFireJamesWoods."

Woods also shared the good news Friday that a man named Eddie had been found after Woods shared a message from his cousins that he was missing. A man's aunt and uncle, who are in her 70s, also had been found, though they had spent the night in their car, not knowing if their house was still standing.

The Record-Searchlight said Woods posted more than 100 tweets related to the Camp Fire. The tweets included a message from Bay Area resident Lorrie Ballard who was searching for her parents. They had told her they didn't think they needed to evacuate when she last spoke to them at 10 a.m. Thursday.

But in addition to sharing photos of missing people, Woods also posted links to news stories about the fire and traffic updates for evacuees.

As Woods' posts picked up momentum, his hashtag #CampFireJamesWoods became nearly as popular as the #CampFire hashtag, the Record-Searchlight added.

Throughout the course of the night, Woods received tweets from people who said they didn't agree with his conservative politics but who thanked him for his efforts on behalf of the Camp Fire survivors. Woods wrote to one user, "Politics pale by comparison to the work so many did yesterday, last night, and are still doing."

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