LOS ANGELES, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- The death toll in Northern California's raging wildfire, dubbed Camp Fire, climbed to nine, Butte County Sheriff Korey Honea said at a press conference Friday night.
The fires have thus far proved to be unstoppable, operating at flash-flood velocity. The big wildfire here in Southern California, known as the Woolsey Fire, quadrupled in size Friday, covering more than 22 square miles, with no containment. It easily jumped eight-lane Highway 101 and rambled over the Santa Monica Mountains to posh Malibu, where it torched homes and cars. The wildfire then finally ran into its only match so far: the Pacific Ocean.
The bulletins from the northern part of the state were even worse. At least nine people died in or near their homes or vehicles as they tried to outrace the Camp Fire, which devastated the mountain town of Paradise, about 90 miles north of the state capital, Sacramento.
Paradise was anything but, with block after block of destruction, downed power lines, charred cars in the middle of roads, utility poles still smoldering and spot fires around the town, though there wasn’t much vegetation left to burn. Random buildings still stand in the town of 27,000, but for every edifice that survived, dozens that did not.
Marc Kessler, 55, a science teacher at one of Paradise’s middle schools, said the smoke was rising from the Sierra Nevada foothills when he arrived at work Thursday.
“The sky turned black; you couldn’t tell it was daytime,” he said. “It was raining black pieces of soot, coming down like a black snowstorm and starting fires everywhere. Within minutes, the town was engulfed.”
Kessler said authorities told teachers to forget seat belt laws and start piling the 200 or so students who showed up for class Thursday morning into the teachers’ personal vehicles. Some frantic parents showed up to get their children, he said, and bus drivers drove through flames to help save children’s lives.
Kessler said one of the students in his car said, “Oh, look at the moon!”
“I said, ‘That’s not the moon. That’s the sun,’ ” he recalled, his voice breaking. “There were times when there were flames near the vehicles. There were times when you couldn’t see through the smoke. Some of our teachers didn’t think they’d survive.”
About 23.4 million Californians were under red-flag warnings into Friday, and officials warned that flames could reach the city of Chico, a college town of more than 90,000 about six miles from Paradise. People scrambled to evacuate.
