I’m hoping and praying most of them were in transit and lost communication.
the evacuations started early Monday AM.
Folks have had plenty of time to check in.
They just haven’t.
Local fire authorities are grim.
There were perhaps a thousand or so missing. Lack of cell towers etc prevented locating many of the missing, but some 700 have been taken off the list leaving nearly 400 missing. They are finding remains in the ash. Average age of the deceased is around 62, as expected. The elderly could not move fast enough to get out of the fire’s path. They just didn’t have enough time and if they had mobility problems, it just compounded the issue.
Well the landlines are down from the fires and there are a ton of cell towers out too. A lot of people with no way of communicating.