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Rain for wildfire-weary California offers relief and more problems

Four inches of rain could hit Paradise this week, which will help firefighters battling the Camp Fire but could make it hard to find human remains.

The scorched Northern California town of Paradise should get its first significant rainfall in six months this week, a forecast that would at least interrupt one of the most horrific fire seasons in state history.

Paradise could see up to 4 inches of rain Wednesday to Friday, AccuWeather senior meteorologist Kristina Pydynowski said.

"Once you get the first real rain, the fire season comes to an end," Pydynowski said. "The fire threat falls significantly. But it is a double-edged sword."

Cal Fire officials said changing climate conditions mean the fire season never fully ends. Still, the rains this week are likely to provide a huge boost for firefighters battling the historic Camp Fire, which was 70 percent contained Monday night.

With the precipitation comes new issues. Hundreds of workers scoured the incinerated shells of once beautiful homes in a desperate search for the charred remains of victims before rain washes them away.

The task is enormous. The Camp Fire, which has scorched 151,272 acres since it began Nov. 8, has destroyed more than 11,000 homes, more than 400 businesses and thousands of barns, sheds, garages and other structures. The confirmed death toll stood at 79 Monday night, but 699 names remain on the "missing" list, down from nearly 1,000 earlier in the day.

The searchers are armed with masks for breathing, sticks to poke through the rubble and cadaver dogs trained to locate human remains. Houses that have been checked are marked with bright orange paint.

Sheriff Kory Honea said it's possible that the exact death toll will never be known. The search for remains may not be completed before the rain, he said.

“As much as I wish that we could get through all of this before the rains come, I don’t know if that’s possible,” Honea said.

Brian Ramsey, spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service, said downpours and slippery roads can slow movement of firefighters, trucks and other equipment.

The hundreds of fire evacuees living in tents are also a concern. Sunday, officials tried to shut down a tent city outside a Walmart in nearby Chico because of cold temperatures and the forecast of rain. Many campers were shuttled to a shelter at the Butte County Fairgrounds.

Some of the evacuees balked at moving to the indoor shelters.

“There is a crisis now, and if we don’t get this taken care of now, we’re going to have another crisis,” said Guido Barbero, who helps organize services for the evacuees.

Flooding, ash flows and mudslides could pose another problem. The blackened earth will be helpless to absorb the rain.

"The one thing on everybody's mind is the landslide threat," Pydynowski said.

She said most of the terrain around Paradise is not particularly steep, but localized slides and flooding are possible. Areas victimized by previous fires have yet to heal and will be vulnerable, she said.

"Any recently scarred area is vulnerable," she said. "The Mendocino Fire area hasn’t had a chance to recover, even areas around the Ferguson Fire."

The Mendocino Complex Fire, which started in July, burned more than 700 square miles to become the largest fire in state history. The Ferguson Fire started a couple of weeks earlier and forced the closure of much of Yosemite National Park.

The long-range forecast calls for slightly above-normal rainfall in Northern California this winter, Pydynowski said. That will be good for dousing fires – and bad because it feeds vegetation that will dry out next summer and fuel the fires of 2019.

Contributing: Damon Arthur, Redding (California) Record Searchlight; The Associated Press

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