Two children and their great-grandmother were killed in the massive Carr Fire in Northern California’s Shasta County, according to NBC Bay Area, which confirmed the news with a family member.
Five-year-old James Roberts, 4-year-old Emily Roberts and great-grandmother Melody Bledsoe were preparing to evacuate a home in Redding, California, and had called police when the fire struck and all three perished, NBC reported.
At a news conference Saturday, Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said only that three members of the same family had been reported missing. About a dozen people have been reported missing in the area so far, he said.
Two other people, a Redding firefighter and a private hire dozer operator, have been killed in the fire, officials said.
The Carr Fire, which broke out Monday afternoon, nearly doubled in size from 48,312 acres Friday night to 83,800 acres Saturday, with containment only at 5%, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.
Fresh evacuations were ordered Saturday for some residents of Shasta County, as the Carr Fire raged for the third day. The blaze has destroyed 536 homes or other structures and damaged 117 others, officials said.
The Shasta County fire has forced as many as 38,000 residents to evacuate and as many as 6,000 homes are threatened, officials said. The 3,400 firefighters assigned to the blaze had a perimeter of about 100 miles to cover, they said.
