CHICO, Calif. — After Jarrad Winter escaped on foot from the wildfire that destroyed his home in Magalia, Calif., and then caught a hair-raising ride with a neighbor through the flames and out of the hills to safety in Chico, he was at wits’ end. Like dozens of other survivors, he found refuge in the field by the local Walmart.

“I never thought I’d live in a tent city,” said Mr. Winter, 39, a Marine Corps veteran and software developer who had recently emerged from a stretch of homelessness, only to lose everything he owned in the devastating Camp Fire, the deadliest California wildfire on record. “I mean, this is America; we’re not supposed to live this way. But here we are, man, the new normal.”

Firefighters are still battling the colossal blazes in California that have already claimed 80 lives, 77 of them in Butte County north of Sacramento, where the Camp Fire has raged. Nearly 1,300 people remain missing and unaccounted for.

As of Sunday evening, the Camp Fire, which has already burned nearly 150,000 acres, was about 65 percent contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.