Authorities made public a list of 297 people still unaccounted for Wednesday night as they announced that the number of people who had been killed in the deadliest wildfire in California history had grown to 56.

Butte County sheriff's officials earlier in the day published a list of 101 missing people. At a news conference early Wednesday night, Sheriff Kory Honea said 29 further names would be added later Wednesday night, for a total of 130. But when the updated list (PDF) was published late Wednesday evening, it bore 297 names.

The sheriff's office said no one was available to discuss why so many more people were listed as missing in the intervening three hours.

Meanwhile, eight more sets of human remains were found Wednesday, the sheriff's office said, and more than 8,700 homes have been destroyed since the Camp Fire ignited last Thursday morning. The fire had consumed 138,000 acres by Wednesday night and remained only 35 percent contained.

"We'll be here for several years working this disaster," Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said at a news conference after he toured Paradise with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and California Gov. Jerry Brown.

"This is going to be a very long, a frustrating event for the citizens of Paradise," said Long, who added it would be reasonable for residents to conclude that rebuilding the city isn't worth it.

"The infrastructure is basically a total rebuild at this point," he said. "You're not going to be able to rebuild Paradise the way it was."