Camp Fire Death Toll At 29 After More Remains Discovered, Tied For Deadliest Wildfire In California History

The Camp Fire that is still burning in Butte County, California is now tied for the deadliest fire in California history.

Butte County Sheriff-Coroner Kory Honea announced during a Sunday night press conference that six additional remains were discovered by coroner search teams. Five were discovered in homes in Paradise, California and one was discovered in a car.

Those six bodies bring the death total to 29, tying the Camp Fire with the Griffith Park Fire in 1933 as the state's deadliest.

On Saturday, Honea said that an additional coroner's search team would be deployed, bringing the total to five. However, on Sunday, Honea said that ten teams are now searching for remains and that two anthropology teams – one from California State University's Chico campus and one from the University of Nevada at Reno – had joined the search to analyze bones and bone fragments found by the teams.

A third anthropolgy team from Las Vegas will also be joining the effort soon, Honea said.

Officials also stated that the recovery effort is in the early stages, with the expectation that more bodies will be discovered in the coming days.

Honea said that 228 individuals are unaccounted for, with 170 located from the sherriff's office's initial list. Many of those individuals have been found in shelters.

To help combat the flood of calls coming in from concerned friends and family, additional numbers have been set up at the command center for loved ones to call and report a missing individual. Those numbers are 530-538-6570, 530-538-7544 and 530-538-7671.

"I know people have been frustrated about calling our office and getting busy signals. I want people to understand that we are getting a lot of calls. ...Please know that we are trying to get better every day in establishing that," Honea said.

Honea urged individuals who have already called to report someone missing to do so again in order to connect with a detective in order and update their missing persons case.

The Camp Fire is now 25 percent contained, but has burned 111,000 acres and 6,713 structures destroyed since it began on Thursday morning. No additional evacuation notices were issued on Sunday, but a red flag morning remains in effect through 7 a.m. local time on Monday with wind gusts up to 40 mph possible.

Red flag warnings mean that conditions are critical for extreme fire conditions. They are issued by the National Weather Service.

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