The northern California wildfire that destroyed the mountain town of Paradise and killed at least 85 people was 100% contained on Sunday, state fire officials said.

Climate report: Trump administration downplays warnings of looming disaster Read more

The so-called Camp fire, the deadliest such blaze in California history, started on 8 November. It burned nearly 154,000 acres – an area five times the size of San Francisco – and destroyed nearly 14,000 homes in and around Paradise, about 175 miles north-east of San Francisco, according to the California department of forestry and fire protection.

The number of people still missing dropped to 249 on Sunday, the Butte county sheriff’s office said. The number was revised from 475 as people who were believed missing were found in shelters, staying in hotels or with friends, officials said. Many had not known they were on the list.

Searchers will have a few more days of dry weather but starting late on Tuesday, another 2in to 5in of rain is expected to drop on the Sierra Nevada foothills through to Sunday, hampering work and renewing fears of flash floods and mudslides, forecasters said.

“The fear is that the rain will drop in intense bursts,” Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the federal Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said on Sunday. “All the vegetation has burned away, and that’s a dangerous recipe for mudslides.”

The 2in to 3in of rain that fell in recent days turned ash from the thousands of destroyed homes into slurry, complicating the work of finding bodies reduced to bone fragments. The Butte county sheriff, Kory Honea, has warned that remains of some victims may never be found.

Investigators have yet to determine the cause of the fire.