PARADISE, Calif. — The Camp Fire in northern California is now the state’s deadliest, with 42 fatalities and more than 200 people still unaccounted for. More than 7,500 homes and buildings have been destroyed in the Camp Fire and the Woolsey Fire in Southern California.
As firefighters continue to battle flames, there are more clues as to what may have started what is now the deadliest blaze in state history.
Betsy Ann Cowley said she was away on vacation when she received an email from her electric company, PG&E, asking permission to check some high-power lines because of a “problem with sparks.”
That problem may be responsible for those deaths and thousands of destroyed structures.
For the relatives and friends of the missing, it’s been an agonizing wait for answers, especially for 30-year-old Chardonnay Telly, who has not heard from her father, Richard Brown, since before the blaze.
CBS News went with Telly when she finally reached her father’s charred land Tuesday.
“I think that’s his tractor,” she said through tears. “My dad’s a survivor, he has been through war and so many things, and there’s a possibility he could have made it.”
Telley, a registered nurse, had her own brush with death when she fled the town of Paradise, saving three of her patients. She said when she called her husband, she told him, “We’re not going to make it.”
“Tell the kids that I love them and to check on my dad,” she added.
But the search for him continues.
“Finding nothing, that’s my fear,” she said.
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