California wildfire death toll rises to 29 as winds set to pick up

The death toll from wildfires ravaging on both ends of California has risen to at least 29, after remains of six more people have been found. The so-called "Camp Fire" leveled nearly the entire city of Paradise, scorching thousands of homes and leaving its business district in ruins. More than 200 people are still missing after the wildfire decimated the town of about 27,000.

Butte County Sheriff Kory L. Honea told reporters that five bodies were found in homes and one was found in a vehicle.

The Camp Fire, believed to be the most destructive in state history, had burned more than 6,000 homes and scorched 111,000 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.

Roughly 100 people were still missing after the fire tore through Butte County, said Mark Ghilarducci, director of the California Office of Emergency Services.

Twenty-nine people also died in the Griffith Park Fire of 1933, according to Cal Fire.

In Southern California, the Woolsey Fire was burning from Thousand Oaks, a city still reeling from a mass shooting that left 12 people dead last week, to the wealthy coastal enclave of Malibu. The fire killed two people, threatened nearly 60,000 structures and forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of residents, officials said.

Still, even after the hot, dry Santa Ana winds — which blow toward the Southern California coast from the desert, fanning wildfires — returned on Sunday, fire officials said there were no new reports of burned buildings. And firefighters were able to contain flare-ups in blustery canyons.

"Today was very challenging, but we've had huge successes," Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby told reporters on Sunday afternoon.

Still, vast swaths of the state remained under a red flag warning, a designation used by the National Weather Service to indicate ideal wildland fire conditions. Nearly 150,000 people remained under mandatory evacuation orders across the state as of Sunday afternoon, Ghilarducci said.

With 40 mph winds forecast in Southern California through Tuesday, more evacuations were possible, Ventura County Sheriff's Sergeant Eric Bouche said.

Similar wind conditions were also forecast across much of Northern California through Monday, according to the National Weather Service.

The Camp Fire began early Thursday morning and quickly roared through the town of Paradise, population roughly 26,000 people, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.