U.S. President Donald Trump took a helicopter tour Saturday over parts of northern California ravaged by the country’s deadliest wildfire in a century, as more than 1,000 people remained unaccounted for.
Landing at Beale Air Force Base, he was greeted by Gov. Jerry Brown and governor-elect Gavin Newsom, both Democrats. Trump boarded Marine One without making public remarks.
Trump planned to hear from those leaders about the dire situation and talk with first responders, and later was expected to travel several hundred miles south to visit with victims of a recent country music bar mass shooting.
Authorities have confirmed a new death toll of 71 and say they are trying to locate 1,011 people, even as they stressed that not all are believed missing.
Brown and Newsom welcomed Trump’s visit, declaring it’s time “to pull together for the people of California.”
“I think that the biggest message and the biggest takeover will be the president saying, ‘We’re here,’ and thankfully the president’s got big shoulders, and I think he’s going to go there to offer them up to people that need somebody to lean on,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Friday on the Fox News Channel.
Problems with evacuation plans
The deadly blaze, known as the Camp Fire, began Nov. 8 and all but razed the town of Paradise, population 27,000. The nearby communities of Magalia and Concow were also heavily damaged. In all, the fires destroyed 9,800 homes and, at their height, displaced 52,000 people.
When strong winds pushed flames into Paradise at three kilometres per minute around 8 a.m. that day, emergency personnel and locals realized escape plans that were crafted after a 2008 blaze would not work.
Their plans for a staggered evacuation, one zone at a time to avoid panic and chaos, “went out the window” and everyone was ordered to leave, Paradise emergency operations co-ordinator Jim Broshears said.
A rescue worker gives her cadaver dog water as they search the Paradise Gardens apartments for victims of the Camp Fire on Friday in Paradise, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The Napa Valley Register reports that a full-scale evacuation order was issued at 9:17 a.m., but by then the fire was already consuming the town.
With the fire toppling power lines and mobile towers, and residents jamming networks with calls, about 60 per cent of CodeRED alerts were delivered to phones and mobile apps.
Between 25 and 50 per cent of residents had signed up for the optional system, said Troy Harper of OnSolve, the company that provides the service, meaning 30 per cent of households, at best, got alerts.
This patch of California, a former Gold Rush region in the Sierra Nevada foothills, is to some extent Trump country, with Trump beating Hillary Clinton in Butte County by four percentage points in 2016.
Trump tweets stirs resentment
But Trump has stirred resentment among survivors over comments he made two days after the disaster on Twitter, then reiterated on the eve of his visit.
In an interview taped Friday and scheduled for broadcast on Fox News Sunday, Trump said he was surprised to see images of firefighters removing dried brush near a fire, adding, “This should have been all raked out.”
Asked if he thought climate change contributed to the fires, he said: “Maybe it contributes a little bit. The big problem we have is management.”
Watch: Climate change and wildfires
Those comments echoed his initial reaction to the fires Nov. 10 when he blamed the wildfires on poor forest management and threatened then to withhold federal payments. Trump subsequently approved a federal disaster declaration.
“If you insult people, then you go visit them, how do you think you’re going to be accepted? You’re not going to have a parade,” Maggie Crowder of Magalia said this week outside an informal shelter at a Walmart store in Chico.
But Stacy Lazzarino, who voted for Trump, said it would be good for the president to see the devastation up close: “I think by maybe seeing it, he’s going to be like ‘Oh, my goodness,’ and it might start opening people’s eyes.”
Watch: Questions about California’s forest management
More than 5,500 fire personnel were battling the blaze that covered 590 square kilometres and was 50 per cent contained officials said.
Firefighters were racing against time with a red flag warning issued for Saturday night into Sunday, including winds up to 80 km/h and low humidity. Rain was forecast for mid-week, which could help firefighters but also complicate the challenging search for remains.
“It’s a disheartening situation,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea told a news conference Friday. “As much as I wish we could get through this before the rains come, I don’t know if that’s possible.”
List of missing ‘dynamic’
The number of people unaccounted for grew to more than 1,000 on Friday. But Honea acknowledged the list was “dynamic” and could easily contain duplicate names and unreliable spellings of names.
The roster probably includes some who fled the blaze and do not realize they’ve been reported missing, he said.
“We are still receiving calls. We’re still reviewing emails,” Honea said. “This is a massive undertaking. We have hundreds and hundreds of people working on this.”
Families searching for loved ones have scoured shelters and social media and say they understand the chaos of the situation. But many said the wait for information is agonizing.
