PARADISE, Calif. | Volunteers wearing hard hats, respirators and yellow rain pants had been sifting through ash and debris searching for human remains in the wake of a Northern California wildfire, but a downpour Friday turned the ash into a thick paste, making it more difficult to find fragments of bone and forcing them to temporarily stop their work.
Craig Covey, who heads a search team from Southern California’s Orange County, said those looking through the destruction in Paradise and two nearby communities were not directed to stop but that he chose to take a break until the rain clears.
Heavy rain and strong winds were knocking over trees, increasing the risk they could fall on searchers, he said.
“It’s just not worth it — we’re not saving lives right now, we’re recovering lives,” Covey said of the dangerous conditions.
The nation’s deadliest wildfire in the past 100 years has killed at least 84 people, and more than 560 are still unaccounted for. Despite the inclement weather, more than 800 volunteers continued to search for remains on Thanksgiving and again Friday, two weeks after flames swept through the Sierra Nevada foothills, authorities said.
Covey’s team of about 30 people had been working for several hours Friday morning before pausing and returning to a staging area with hot coffee and food under two blue tents. An electric heater provided warmth.
While the rain is making everybody colder and wetter, they’re maintaining the mission at hand, search volunteer Chris Stevens said, standing under an awning as the team waited out a stretch of heavy rain.
“Everyone here is super committed to helping the folks here,” he said.
Two days of showers have complicated the search but also helped nearly extinguish the blaze, said Josh Bischof, operations chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
Once the rain clears, state officials will be able to determine if the blaze is fully out, he said.
The Camp Fire ignited Nov. 8 and has destroyed nearly 19,000 buildings, most of them homes. That’s more than the worst eight fires in California’s history combined, the agency said, with thousands of people displaced.
