Cooler temperatures overnight may have helped firefighters increase containment on the Valley Fire burning mainly in Lake County.
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The Napa Valley Fairgrounds is the largest evacuation center in the Napa and Lake Counties with hundreds of people from all over the area. Smoke and unsafe conditions for air surveillance had made it hard for fire officials to assess how far through the hills the Valley fire had burned Sunday.
They said they could not name her until they had confirmed her identity and reached her next of kin.
The death marks the first civilian fatality in the wildfires that have devastated the western United States in recent months.
The fire has killed at least one person, an elderly, disabled woman unable to escape her home on Saturday.
Cal Fire Local 2881 President Mike Lopez said two or three other firefighters may have lost their homes as well.
Another 11,000 or so in Amador and Calaveras counties have been ordered to evacuate because of the Butte Fire, which had scorched more than 71,000 acres and destroyed 166 homes.
Though the cause of the fire remains unknown, California was in the midst of a heatwave when the fire expanded Friday, amplifying the dry conditions necessary for fires to spread, National Weather Service notes.
A neighbor offered to take her with him to Middletown, but McWilliams declined, according to Hittson.
“In some cases, residents only had minutes to evacuate”, Cal Fire said during a fire situation report on Sunday afternoon.
Scores of people are meeting at a high school in Northern California waiting to be escorted back to their homes to check on pets and farm animals after massive wildfires swept through the area.
“This is the future”, Brown said at a press conference Monday, warning that fires are “scary stuff” that were aggravated by a historic four-year drought and climate change.
Among the OCFA personnel are a 22-member hand-crew and 18 firefighters using five brush engines, OCFA Capt. Steve Concialdi said.
The fire has destroyed at least 585 homes, including all homes and tourist destinations in the town of Cobb, Calif. Hundreds of homes have burned.
“We re really in a battle with nature, and nature is more powerful than we are”, Brown told reporters on Monday.
The speed of the blaze caught area residents and authorities off-guard, forcing many to flee in chaotic evacuations through gauntlets of fire as surrounding houses and trees went up in flames around them.
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In addition to the homes, officials also counted two apartment complexes and 10 businesses destroyed by the flames, department spokeswoman Lynn Valentine said.
