Death toll rises to 42 in California’s Camp Fire

The thing about Paradise is that people expected to live out their lives here in the hills. The more than three dozen residents who burned to death — in cars, in homes, on foot — just imagined those lives would last longer.

A town meant for retirement has burned to the ground, its surviving residents scattered across Northern California in shelters and hotels and family homes far from the flames. Driving the five-mile length of the town, under an unsettling orange sun, you would be hard-pressed to find more than a half dozen buildings untouched by fire.

“You get out of the way,” said Mike Conaty, a Cal Fire captain who on Monday was dispatching rescue crews to search for the more than 200 people still un­accounted for — house-by-house work more likely to turn up a body than a survivor. “Then you come back and pick up the pieces.”