Search-and-rescue teams in Northern California are combing through the debris of burned-out houses for dozens of people still missing in the state's deadliest wildfires, which have killed at least 41 people and destroyed thousands of homes.
Herb Percy, allowed back into the Coffey Park section of Santa Rosa, where entire neighbourhoods were reduced to ashes, surveyed what little remained of his home.
"December would have been our 30th anniversary here," he said.
Light winds on Tuesday helped 11,000 firefighters gain more control of the flames, which in the past week have consumed more than 86,200 hectares in the state - an area more than five times the size of Washington, DC. The affected area includes Napa and Sonoma counties in California's wine country.
"We're in a far better position today than we were several days ago," Calistoga Mayor Chris Canning said in a phone interview on Tuesday, referring to the Napa Valley.
Most of the 1,863 people listed in missing-persons reports have turned up safe, including many evacuees who failed to alert authorities after fleeing their homes.
As of Tuesday, 65 people were listed as missing in Sonoma County, the sheriff's office said. Napa County said it still had 15 people missing.
Tens of thousands of people who fled the flames in Sonoma County and elsewhere have been allowed to return home. About 34,000 were still displaced.
The Tubbs fire around Calistoga was 82 per cent contained and the Atlas fire to the southeast was 77 per cent contained on Tuesday, according to authorities.
The Nuns Fire, located in Sonoma County and now the state's largest blaze, was 68 per cent contained.
Share
