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 The remains, though not yet positively identified, were believed
to be of two men who had been reported missing in separate
communities ravaged by the so-called Valley Fire just north of Napa
County's wine-producing region, the Lake County Sheriff's Office
said.
Earlier in the week, authorities reported discovering the remains of
an elderly, disabled woman who was unable to flee her house in the
early frantic hours of the Valley Fire on Saturday and perished as
flames consumed her home.
Two more people who authorities said defied evacuation orders, lost
their lives in the Butte Fire, still burning more than a week after
it erupted more than 100 miles (160 km) to the east in California
Gold Rush country of the Sierra Nevada foothills.
Ranking as the most destructive wildfires in California this year,
the two conflagrations together have blackened more than 145,000
acres (58,000 hectares) while laying waste to more than 800 homes
and forcing the evacuation of some 20,000 people.
 Fire officials say the two blazes are emblematic of an intense
wildfire season in California that is already shaping up as one of
the fiercest on record, with much of September and all of October,
historically the worst two months of the year, still ahead.
Property losses from the Valley Fire - 585 homes and hundreds more
buildings destroyed - stand as the highest among the thousand of
wildfires that have raged across the entire drought-stricken western
United States this summer.
But a cooling trend, rain and diminished winds have helped
firefighters gain additional ground in recent days against the fires
in Northern California.
Containment of the Valley Fire, a measure of how much of its
perimeter has been enclosed within buffer lines carved through
vegetation by ground crews, stood at 35 percent, more than triple
Monday's figure.
In the Sierra foothills to the east, the Butte Fire was 55 percent
by Thursday evening, the California Department of Forestry and Fire
Prevention (Cal Fire) reported.
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That blaze may have been sparked when a power line belonging to the
Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) company hit a tree, the company said.
DEFYING EVACUATION ORDERS
The rising death toll added a greater dimension of tragedy to
California's fire crisis, especially given that at least some of the
deaths could have been prevented.
The two people killed in the Butte Fire had both opted to remain in
harm's way rather than heed evacuation orders, Cal Fire spokesman
Daniel Berlant said in a video update from the agency's Sacramento
headquarters. He did not detail how the warnings were issued or
disseminated.
“You cannot outrun a fire,” Cal Fire spokeswoman Lynette Round
added. “If they come out there and tell you it’s time to go, it’s
time to go.”
The two men whose deaths were announced on Thursday had been
reported missing by their families earlier in the week - Leonard
Neft, 69, a former reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, and Bruce
Bevin Burns, whose age was not immediately released, according to
Lake County Sheriff's Lieutenant Steve Brooks.
In addition to the five deaths attributed to the two blazes, four
firefighters were hospitalized with burns on Saturday in the initial
hours of the Valley Fire on Saturday.
(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, Calif.; Editing by
Lisa Lambert, Marguerita Choy and Jacqueline Wong)
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