Paradise: A grim search and desperate prayers for miracles

PARADISE - It's afternoon in Paradise and the body count is growing.

At the charred ruins of a mobile home, a search crew in white hazmat suits carried out the most sobering of duties, delicately removing remains so brittle that each body part was cradled in gloved hands.

“Hold it from the bottom,” the team leader said to one of the workers on her knees in the ash. “That's special.”

The grim discoveries continued Sunday across the fire-ravaged foothills southeast of Chico, where the wind picked up and the white ash blew and relatives of the missing prayed for miracles.

The Camp Fire that started Thursday morning and destroyed at least 6,435 homes and more than 200 commercial buildings has already been named the most destructive wildfire in California history. By Sunday afternoon, another six people were confirmed dead for a total of 29 so far - tying the 1933 record set in Los Angeles for the deadliest wildfire in California history. Five of the bodies were found in homes. The sixth was recovered from a vehicle. At least 121 more people are still unaccounted for, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said Sunday night.

“Just think of all the people. I can't imagine it,” said Arthur Lee, 65, who is still searching for his 93-year-old mother and stepfather whom he fears didn't make it out of their home in Paradise.

Since the inferno started Thursday morning, scores of families have been calling hospitals, searching Red Cross shelters and posting photos of their loved ones online. Even actor James Woods retweeted pleas for the missing.

During a live-streamed community meeting with law enforcement and fire officials at Cal State Chico on Saturday night, one man in the audience appealed to the crowd packing the auditorium: “I'm looking for my mom, Barb Allen. I'm hoping she's listening, or I was hoping she was here,” he said. She worked in the Paradise community center, he said. “Barbara Allen - if anyone has seen her.”

A man jumped up from his seat up front. “I have!” he called out. “At Walmart today.”

If only the rest had such happy endings.

As they head into the fifth day of searching and waiting for news, family members of the missing are preparing for the worst.

The Butte County Sheriff's office was setting up a mobile DNA lab for relatives to provide locks of their hair or swabs from their mouths to match the remains of the dead.

Hollie Weeks worries that her grandmother, 78-year-old widow Marie Wehe, is among them. She lives in Concow, close to where the fire started just northeast of Paradise, where four bodies had been discovered but not identified. The family hasn't heard from her since the night before the fire.

“We got hold of a neighbor two houses down,” said Weeks, who lives in Sacramento. “He said he saw the fire at her back fence so he told her she needed to get her stuff and leave. He saw her get in the truck and leave her driveway. He didn't see anything else.”

She and her mother have run through numerous scenarios, and none of them are good.

“I've thought maybe she went back into the house and maybe the house burned with her in it, or she drove and couldn't see and swerved off into the waterway, or maybe she drove and a power pole dropped in front of her and she couldn't go. She has no blankets, no water, no food,” Weeks said. “So many things have crossed our minds. It's been since Thursday. It would be a miracle if she's out there somewhere.”

When she looks at news photos of the abandoned cars in ravines and under power lines, “it breaks my heart,” Weeks said. “I feel like one of them could be my grandma.”

Lee, whose 93-year-old mother, Dorothy Lee Herrera, and stepfather Louis Herrera, 85, are still missing from their Paradise home, is feeling desperate.

“We went to all the shelters in Chico. We went to the Butte County Fairgrounds, a shelter in Oroville, all of them were negative,” he said. “We walked through the rows of beds, walked around the parking lots to see if we could see the car. We did that to every shelter.”

And still nothing.

His mother walked with a cane, but was in good health. She was “really sharp,” he said. Neither his mother nor stepfather has a cell phone, but she had called from her home phone the morning of the fire.

“My mother left a message that she needed to evacuate,” Lee, 65, said. “And that was it. There's nothing else.”

In the remains of neighborhoods, 10 search-and-recovery teams from the coroner's office, plus two teams of grad students from Cal State Chico and the University of Nevada, Reno took shuttle buses Sunday from one smoldering lot to the next. A third team, from Las Vegas, was scheduled to arrive on Monday. After pulling aside metal cabinets and ceiling tiles, the crews gingerly sifted through ash with hand trowels. Law enforcement officials were on hand to remove the remains.

“This is pretty dramatic and close to home,” said Eric Bartelink, a professor at Cal State Chico's anthropology department, which runs a “human identification lab.”

“We have friends and relatives affected by the fire and we know there was a massive loss of life. We're here to help and provide closure for the families.”

At the site of the mobile home in Paradise on Sunday afternoon, the crew from Reno took photos and gently placed each piece they recovered into evidence bags. Then they climbed into the shuttle bus and headed for the next address.