National Guard to help search for remains as firefighters work to tame deadly US fire
About 100 military police trained to search for human remains will bolster efforts to find the bodies of Paradise residents killed in the deadly blaze
National Guard troops were due to arrive on Wednesday to help search for more victims in the charred, ash-strewn ruins where the northern California town of Paradise stood, before it was erased in the deadliest, most destructive wildfire in state history. The Guard contingent, about 100 military police trained to look for and identify human remains, will reinforce the coroner-led recovery teams, cadaver dogs and forensic anthropologists already scouring the ghostly landscape of a fire that has killed at least 48 people. The grim, painstaking search is concentrated in what little is left of Paradise, a Sierra foothills town in Butte County, California, about 280km north of San Francisco, which was overrun by flames and largely incinerated last Thursday. The killer blaze, fuelled by thick, drought-desiccated scrub and fanned by fierce winds, capped a catastrophic California wildfire season that experts largely attribute to prolonged dry spells they say are symptomatic of global climat...
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