Nov. 26 -- Seventeen days after California’s deadliest wildfire ignited in Butte County, firefighters have officially harnessed the Camp Fire, announcing Sunday that the blaze was at last 100 percent contained.
The milestone comes after protracted horror for the town of Paradise and surrounding areas, and amid news of tragedy that will long outlive the flames. Within days of the Camp Fire erupting on Nov. 8, the monster inferno had eclipsed state records as the most deadly and destructive wildfire.
The death toll stands at 85 victims after search crews recovered no remains Sunday. The number of missing, though, increased from 249 to 296, Butte County officials said.
The Camp Fire leveled 13,972 residences by the time of containment at 153,336 acres. The second most destructive blaze was last year’s Tubbs Fire in Napa and Sonoma counties, which destroyed 5,636 structures. California’s second deadliest wildfire, the Griffith Park Fire in Los Angeles County in 1933, killed 29 people.
Rain that doused Northern California on Wednesday slowed the spread of the blaze and helped firefighters gain an edge. This sped up containment considerably, said Brigitte Foster, fire prevention officer for the Lassen National Forest and spokeswoman for the Camp Fire efforts.
As recently as last week, crews didn’t expect to reach 100 percent containment until Nov. 30. But by early Sunday, firefighters established lines in the remaining remote areas, northwest of Brush Creek.
Crews will continue mopping up affected areas, starting from 50 to 100 feet from the containment line. They’ll mostly be checking for smoldering roots and stumps, which can burn internally. Crews will use tools to dig around the stump, break it open, and manually pack in dirt and water until it’s cooled.
Once the borders of the burn area are under control, crews will continue working their way inward. With a blaze the size of the Camp Fire, “that can take several months in order to call a fire out,” Foster said.
Fears of mudslides and debris flows in burn scar areas had mostly dissipated by Sunday, at least for the foreseeable future. None was reported in Paradise or neighboring Magalia after last week’s showers, and rain forecast for this week isn’t expected to cause much damage, either.
“Even though the rain occurred over a long enough time (last week), it was steady enough that it did not cause any immediate impact,” said Hannah Chandler-Cooley, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service. “The main concern with debris flows is when you get a large amount of rain in a very short amount of time.”
Paradise received 3.22 inches of rain last week, Concow had close to 5 inches and Magalia recorded 5.41 inches, according to the National Weather Service.
More rain is expected to begin Tuesday and continue Wednesday through Thursday, Chandler-Cooley said. But this weather system probably won’t be as wet as last week’s, with meteorologists predicting 1 to 3 inches over the three days.
There’s a slight chance for heavier thunderstorms Thursday, “but the confidence is low right now,” Chandler-Cooley said.
“Right now we are letting officials at the fire know the potential just so they can plan ahead of time,” she added. “But we will have to wait and see what happens as the week progresses.”
Butte County began consolidating its shelters late last week, transitioning the remaining evacuees to shelters at Glenn County Fairgrounds in Orland or Butte County Fairgrounds in Gridley. As of Saturday night, 350 people were still sleeping at the four remaining Red Cross shelters, said American Red Cross spokesman Stephen Walsh.
There’s no hard deadline for people to leave the shelters, but they are designed as a temporary solution, and Red Cross volunteers are working to pair evacuees with agencies that can secure more long-term aid.
“I have heard personally of stories from people who said, ‘I didn’t have any insurance, so what I lost in the fire, I lost it, it’s gone,’” Walsh said. “So that’s one of our many roles, is at least trying to get them to tell us what (they) need, and then trying to connect them with the right resources.”
In what is his fifth disaster with the Red Cross, Walsh said he’s never witnessed a tragedy with as many people unaccounted for. The list of missing people has fluctuated since the beginning of the fire, peaking at more than 1,200. Many of the Paradise and Magalia residents were elderly or disabled, and with the area’s spotty cell phone service, many relied solely on landlines.
“I was getting anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen phone calls each day the first week, from people saying ‘I can’t find somebody.’... I’ve never seen that,” he said. “So that was chilling, for sure.”
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