The death toll for the Camp Fire that’s raging through Northern California has climbed to 29, ABC News reports, with an additional 228 people reported missing.
In the southern part of the state, two more people have died due to other fires in the area.
The town of Paradise, where the Camp Fire is blazing, was home to about 27,000 people, many of whom now have no homes to return to once the fire is out, CNN reports.
With 10 search-and-rescue teams out looking for the missing people, residents aren’t giving up. Colusa Police Sgt. Jarrod Hughes is one of more than 30 police officers who lost their homes, and are still out helping others, according to CNN affiliate KTXL.
"It's my community, it's where I grew up. It's something I absolutely had to do," Hughes said. "There was no question about it. It was get my family to safety so I can get in and get back up there and help everybody else.”
CNN reports that the three major fires, the Camp Fire in the north, and the Hill and Woolsey Fires in the south, have scorched over 200,000 acres of land. Nearly 7,000 homes and other structures have been destroyed, and another 57,000 in Southern California are currently under threat, officials say.
More than 300,000 people have been forced to evacuate, with 170,000 of those being in Los Angeles County.
California Gov. Jerry Brown discussed the role climate change is playing in the disasters, saying “This is not the new normal. This is the new abnormal. This is real here.”
Donald Trump, on the other hand, tweeted that the fires were due to “gross mismanagement of the forests,” and threatened to cut funding to California if it doesn’t “remedy now.”
There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2018
Many people blasted the president for his callousness, calling him “heartless” and “demented,” Refinery29 reports.
Our National Embarrassment can't bring himself to show some empathy to Californians dealing with a horrific disaster. https://t.co/WwLA7UTI8c
— John Legend (@johnlegend) November 10, 2018
Hopping off Twitter and back into real life, here’s how you can help everyone dealing with this massive disaster.
