BREAKING: LA fires death toll rises to 16 as firefighters send 'cadaver dogs' into smoking ruins
BREAKING: LA fires death toll rises to 16 as firefighters send 'cadaver dogs' into smoking ruins
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The death toll from the California wildfires has risen to 16, local officials have confirmed, as emergency services take drastic measures to find human remains. The Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office confirmed over the weekend that the death toll from the now six wildfires has risen to more than a dozen. The office attributed all of the deaths to the two largest and uncontained blazes - the Palisades and Eaton fires - with the two having claimed five and 11 lives respectively.
The distressing new toll is up by five on the last estimations from local officials, who have deployed units of cadaver dogs to comb the scorched Golden State. The dogs - trained specifically to recognise human remains - have been scouring through tens of thousands of acres of burned land as officials strive to understand the full deadly extent of the fires.
The grim work of sifting through the burnt-out wreckage that now scatters vast swathes of the Golden State continued on Saturday, with the dogs conducting systematic grid searches. While the search for human remains continues, people have been asked to report any people who have gone missing since the fires ignited to a centre established to process missing persons cases.
Although they are usually deployed to find someone thought deceased, the cadaver dogs are used to do more than find the remains of people who died in the fires, as they can also help "reunite families" by finding survivors, officials said. The Los Angeles Search Dogs organisation states dog teams are also responsible for trailing and "area" searches.
