Camp Fire: Two more bodies found, bringing death toll to 83

Search and rescue teams sift through the rubble for human remains as the rain falls along Pearson Road in Paradise, Calif. Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018 after the Camp Fire devastated the entire town. Search and rescue teams sift through the rubble for human remains as the rain falls along Pearson Road in Paradise, Calif. Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018 after the Camp Fire devastated the entire town. Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 18 Caption Close Camp Fire: Two more bodies found, bringing death toll to 83 1 / 18 Back to Gallery

PARADISE, Butte County — A soaking rainstorm gave firefighters at the Camp Fire a welcome break a day before Thanksgiving, allowing them to scale back their two-week battle against the massive blaze as the slow search for human remains continued.

The rain should help douse the flames and speed up containment efforts, fire officials said Wednesday, but it could also create dangerous conditions in the form of mudslides, flooding, slick roads and falling trees. The storm also hampered efforts to find and recover bodies.

“It’s miserable,” said Dustin Topp, an engineer with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, as he worked in the rain. His team was combing through a trailer park that was home to people 55 and older, looking for human remains and checking for hazards like septic tanks.

As of Wednesday night, 83 deaths had been reported from the Camp Fire. Two remains were found on Wednesday, one in a structure in Paradise and another in a structure in Magalia, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said in a Wednesday night news conference.

Six more victims were identified Wednesday night, bringing the number of victims publicly identified to 12. Their names are Teresa Ammans, 82, of Paradise; Richard Brown, 74, of Concow; Marie Wehe, 78, of Concow; Kimber Wehr, 53, of Paradise; Joseph Rabetoy, 39, of Paradise; and Joan Tracy, 80, of Paradise.

Officials said the wildfire had burned 153,336 acres and crews had it 85 percent contained as of Wednesday night, according to Cal Fire. The inferno incinerated 13,503 residences and nearly 5,000 other buildings and still threatens 5,100 structures, officials said. About 563 people remain unaccounted for.

Fire crews planned to pull back Wednesday and let the rain do the work of putting out flames while teams focus on the search for victims, said Jim Mackensen, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.

The blaze stayed within containment lines, and officials recorded minimal fire activity by Wednesday night, officials said in the news conference.

As part of ongoing cleanup and recovery efforts, Honea said officials are scouring the affected areas and ensuring they are safe when residents are allowed to return to collect personal belongings that may have survived the blaze, assess property damage and connect with emergency resources.

Public health officials are advising residents against living on destroyed property until the area is cleared of waste, as the ash is still toxic and properties may contain high levels of heavy metals, arsenic and other carcinogens, according to Butte County Public Health officials.

Eric Lamoureux, of the California Office of Emergency Services, said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Department of Toxic Substance Control expect to start removing hazardous waste next week, but warned it could take months to fully clear the region of waste.

As for the unknown number of students who have gone without schooling for the past two weeks, Mary Sakuma, deputy superintendent of the Butte County Board of Education, said school officials will open a previously vacant school in Oroville to temporarily hold classes, starting Dec. 3.

The number of personnel involved with controlling the fire already steadily decreasing over the past few days, was down to 3,745 workers Wednesday from 5,332 Monday morning. Wednesday morning, firefighters were clocking out, doing paperwork and turning in supplies as the operation begins to demobilize.

Cal Fire Capt. Joshpae White said the rain can increase the amount of moisture in the air and cool embers on the ground, which helps tamp down the fire. But it can also weigh down tree limbs, causing them to break off and fall. Mixed with water, oil on the roads and flame retardant on the soil create slick conditions for fire trucks and other service vehicles.

Ahead of the storm, crews in Paradise and nearby towns Concow and Magalia used trucks to vacuum soggy debris off the ground to prevent or reduce damage from slides. Workers also set up hay bales and sand bags to divert water.

Debris flows, which can send fallen tree branches, rocks, ash and mud down steep slopes, are almost inevitable during heavy rains after a severe burn, authorities said. The areas that experienced the most severe burns also had the steepest topography and were therefore uninhabited, said National Weather Service meteorologist Aviva Braun. But slides could still be a threat to people working in burn areas or homes downstream of a slide.

Wind could cause problems, too. Braun expects wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph Thursday and Friday, which could topple fire-weakened trees.

The last significant rain in the area was 220 days ago — in April — said Braun, who studies how weather affects fire behavior and has been at the site of the Camp Fire since Saturday. On Wednesday, she sat behind two computers where she was monitoring the rain by radar.

Periodic showers were expected to bring 1 to 2 inches of rain Wednesday and 4 to 6 inches through Saturday, but some areas were forecast to get heavier rain than others, and that’s where problems could arise, Braun said. She was expecting the heaviest showers between 1 and 4 p.m. Wednesday, then again Thursday night to Friday, but it can be hard to predict where they’ll land.

“You don’t know exactly where it’s going to be until you’re staring at it on the radar,” she said.

The rain did not appear to dissuade evacuees staying in a few dozen tents adjacent to a Walmart parking lot in Chico. Officials have been encouraging them to leave for the past few days, without forcing them out. Visitors brought coffee and donations on Wednesday and told them a bus would come by in the afternoon to take them to a shelter if they wanted to go.

Mark Kinsey, 57, was tying white foam rolls together on the walls of his tent for insulation Wednesday afternoon. He said it’ll be an “igloo” by the time he’s done. “We endure.”

Kinsey lost his trailer home in the Paradise Pines neighborhood in the fire. He escaped with some belongings in a neighbor’s Jeep.

“I stayed until the very end.” Until fire was a block away. “I’m a mountain boy, so I’m surviving.”

His family had lived in the Paradise area going back to 1894, when his great-great-grandfather settled there. It was known as “Poverty Ridge” because there wasn’t much industry, and everyone was poor.

Kinsey’s 27-year-old son died last year when he was swept away by a riptide while in Mexico. He said he was lucky to get his child’s body back, and about the rain coming down, “This ain’t nothing compared to that.”

The rain complicated search and recovery efforts.

The first step in searching a ruined dwelling is to remove the roof, said Alameda fire Capt. Brandon Baley, who was leading a crew looking through the debris of a single-family home. But the rain had turned the roof to oatmeal, making the work much slower and more challenging.

A cadaver dog discovered remains in the bathroom of the house. White, with Cal Fire, said the rain can actually help dogs find bodies. But the water can also turn ash to a slurry paste and move around the remains.

At another site, Manteca fire Capt. Kevin Terpstra and his crew checked mattresses, couches, doorways and other areas where people may have huddled for cover as the fire came.

“Bone and plaster look a lot alike,” Terpstra said.

The search team calls an anthropologist when someone finds what could be human remains. About 75 percent of the time, recovered remains are of animals, Baley said.

The death toll has climbed every day since the fire started, as search crews find more bodies in the burned-out rubble. Identifying the remains has been complicated, and slow. Authorities have tentatively identified 56 of the 83 bodies found so far. On Tuesday, they were able to confirm the identities of eight more people killed in the fire.

Many of the bodies don’t have usable fingerprints or dental records, officials said, so normal methods of identification haven’t worked. Instead, authorities have started an unprecedented effort to make identifications through a process known as “rapid DNA.”

The number of people unaccounted for after the fire dropped to 563 Wednesday, down by 307 from the previous day. The list of missing peaked at nearly 1,300 over the weekend, and several hundred of those names have since been removed.