Forensic recovery teams continue searching for victims in the charred wreckage of the northern California town of Paradise with the number of people listed missing in the state's deadliest wildfire topping 1000.
Remains of at least 71 people have been recovered in and around the small Sierra foothills town 280 km north of San Francisco. It was home to nearly 27,000 residents before being largely incinerated by the blaze on November 8.
The disaster already ranks among the deadliest US wildfires since the turn of the last century.
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Eighty-seven people perished in the Big Burn firestorm that swept the Northern Rockies in August of 1910. Minnesota's Cloquet Fire in October of 1918 killed 450.
US President Donald Trump, who has blamed the recent spate of fires on forest mismanagement, was due to visit the fire zones on Saturday to meet displaced residents.
Governor Jerry Brown and Governor-elect Gavin Newsom planned to join his tour.
Authorities attribute the high death toll from the blaze - dubbed "Camp Fire" - partly to the speed with which flames raced through the town with little advance warning, driven by howling winds and fuelled by drought-desiccated scrub and trees.
More than a week later, firefighters have managed to carve containment lines around 45 per cent of the blaze's perimeter. The fire covered 57,000 hectares, fire officials said.
Besides the toll on human life, property losses from the blaze make it the most destructive in California history, posing the additional challenge of providing long-term shelter for many thousands of displaced residents.
With more than 9800 homes up in smoke, many refugees have taken up temporary residence with friends and family, while others have pitched tents or were camping out of their vehicles.
At least 1100 evacuees were being housed in 14 emergency shelters set up in churches, schools and community centres around the region, with a total of more than 47,000 people remaining under evacuation orders.
Search teams with cadaver dogs combed rubble-strewn expanses of burned-out neighbourhoods looking for bodies.
On Friday night, Butte County Sheriff Korea Honea said the remains of eight more fire victims were recovered during the day, bringing the death toll to 71.
That surpasses the previous fatality record from a single California wildfire - 29 in the Griffith Park fire of 1933 in Los Angeles.
Honea said the total roster of people unaccounted for had swelled to 1011 - up from the 630 names posted on Thursday night and well more than triple the number counted as missing on Thursday afternoon.
"This is a dynamic list," he told reporters, saying it was compiled from "raw data" that likely included some duplications or multiple spellings of names.
Honea bristled when asked whether many of those listed at this point, more than a week after the disaster, were expected to end up either deceased or declared missing and presumed dead.
Reuters
