American Digest "Every night at 6 PM the Sherriff of Butte County reveals the grim count of the dead discovered, so far, in the ashes of Paradise. He also reveals the latest number of known missing persons who cannot be located by family or friends. Finally, there is the list of homes and businesses destroyed. The raging fires that destroyed Paradise utterly have passed (for now) but the search for the dead is only beginning.
"Last night’s official tally was:
DEAD: 71 (all but one found inside a home.)MISSING: 1,100HOMES DESTROYED: 9,740 (only about 5% have been search so far)BUSINESSES DESTROYED: 336 . . .
. . . "In the ravines and forests of Paradise, cell reception was so spotty that AT&T gave me my own personal internet driven cell-phone tower. If those off the grid in Paradise actually owned cell phones they would have been lucky to get an alert. But most of those did not own cell phones, and landlines didn’t run that deep in the woods. When the fire closed over them they would have had no warning. No warning until the trailer melted around them. And then there was, out behind but still close to their trailer, their large propane tank.
"How many bodies will be found in the pyre of Paradise? Right now nobody knows for sure. Nobody will ever know for sure. In five years from today, somewhere in the reviving forest of Paradise, some hiker is going to step on a skull. He won’t be the only one."
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