13 Oct 2017

California wildfires: Fears grow for hundreds missing

From Morning Report, 7:37 am on 13 October 2017

With 23 people now confirmed dead in Northern California's raging wildfires, fears are growing for a further 285 reported missing in Sonoma county alone.

Firefighters - many of whom have lost their own homes to the blazes - are facing alarming conditions with gusty winds expected to strengthen by the weekend.

US correspondent Mary MacCarthy is in Sonoma County's Santa Rosa, a city of 175,000 where entire neighbourhoods have been destroyed.

"It's astonishing, by the end of the day if you're not wearing a mask you're coughing your lungs out," she told us.