GRIDLEY, Calif. — Authorities said Thursday afternoon that at least 10 people had died in a massive Northern California wildfire and 16 people remained missing.
Butte County sheriff’s investigators found seven bodies Thursday, a day after three other victims were discovered. Among those unaccounted for are grandparents who told their son they were going to try to escape the flames by finding shelter in a pond.
The weeks-old fire was about 50% contained when winds drove it into explosive growth Tuesday. Some 2,000 homes and other buildings officials had burned by Thursday afternoon.
The fire is among five this year that set records for the most land ever burned, including a blaze that broke the mark Thursday as the largest ever.
More than 2,000 structures had burned by Thursday afternoon in the lightning-sparked collection of fires now known as the North Complex burning about 125 miles northeast of San Francisco.
The wind-driven fire that jumped a river and ripped through dense forest and arid vegetation is the latest extreme fire to burn into the record books this year in California.
More than 4,800 square miles had burned so far this year by Thursday afternoon — more land than Rhode Island, Delaware and Washington, D.C. combined — and fall is typically the worst season for fires.
The fires, fed by drought-sapped vegetation amid warming temperatures attributed to climate change, have spread at an alarming rate and given people less time to flee.
Hundreds of campers, hikers and people spending Labor Day weekend at mountainside reservoirs and retreats had to be evacuated by military helicopter when they got stranded by a fast-moving fire that broke out in the Sierra National Forest in the center of the state during record-setting high temperatures.
Six of the state’s 20 largest fires on record are burning, including the August Complex, centered in wilderness about 130 miles north of San Francisco that is now the biggest fire in state history. It had scorched more than 736 square miles as of Thursday afternoon. That exceeds a 2018 complex in the same region.
President Donald Trump spoke with California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday “to express his condolences for the loss of life and reiterate the administration’s full support to help those on the front lines of the fires,” according to White House spokesman Judd Deere.
The North Complex fire is the 10th largest in the record books and growing as firefighters try to prevent it from advancing toward the town of Paradise, where the most destructive fire in state history two years ago killed 85 people and destroyed 19,000 buildings.
Authorities lifted an evacuation warning for Paradise on Thursday, the day after residents awoke to similar skies as the 2018 morning when a wind-whipped inferno reduced the town to rubble. Under red skies and falling ash Wednesday, many chose to flee again, jamming the main road out of town in another replay of the catastrophe two years ago.
About 20,000 people were under evacuation orders or warnings in three counties from the fire as of Thursday afternoon.
Some 14,000 firefighters continued later Thursday to try to corral 29 major wildfires from the Oregon border to just north of Mexico, though California was almost entirely free of critical fire weather warnings after days of hot, dry conditions and the threat of strong winds.
Smoke blew into vineyards in wine country north of San Francisco, and rose above scenic Big Sur on the Central Coast and in the foothills and mountains of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego counties in the southern part of the state.
Numerous fires continued to burn in Washington and Oregon, as well, and dense smoke blanketed much of the West Coast.