Well over a dozen fires engulfed northern California starting Sunday night, causing catastrophic damage, 17 deaths and stacks of reports of missing people.
More than 20,000 people have been evacuated from their homes. Seventeen people are dead and around 180 are still missing. At least 2,000 homes and businesses have been torched beyond recovery, CNN reports.
The death toll has climbed since Monday. The majority of missing people, however, are due to downed cell towers cutting off communication between family and friends, the San Francisco Gate reports.
Small fires on Sunday quickly grew to out-of-control disasters as hurricane force wind gusts as high as 79 miles per hour fed the flames. The area’s electrical grid has been severely damaged and 35,000 people have lost power, according to CNN.
Around 115,000 acres, or 180 square miles, had been burned by late Tuesday. Nearly half of that was due to just two fires, the Tubbs and Atlas, which have turned a combined 54,000 acres to ash, The Washington Post reports.
“These fires came down into neighborhoods before anyone knew there was a fire in many cases,” Cal Fire Chief Ken Pimlott said according to WaPo. “This is just pure devastation and it’s going to take us a while to get out and comb through all of this.”
President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency in California Tuesday and released federal aid to help victims of the fires find safe shelter and help in the area’s recovery.
“It’s devastating,” Patrick King, a local business owner who is sheltering horses from a nearby ranch, told WaPo. “So instead of going into panic mode, we’re going into help mode, taking care of our citizens.”
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.