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ByBrianSkoloffand Kristin J. Bender The Associated Press MIDDLETOWN Cadaver dogs and their handlers searched Wednesday for a man feared to have per- ished in a fast-moving Northern California wild- fire, and the local sher- iff says he expects several more bodies will eventually be found amid the ashes. An elderly, disabled wom- an's body was found Mon- day in the ruins of her de- stroyed Lake County home, and authorities were search- ing nearby for a 69-year-old man reported missing by his family. His burned-out car was found on the route he would have used to es- cape. "We've already had a con- firmed loss of one life," Lake County Sheriff Brian Mar- tin said while on a tour of the disaster zone with state emergency officials. "We have reports of several oth- ers that may have perished in the fire." State and local officials in a convoy of government- issued SUVs inspected the devastated region about 100 miles north of San Fran- cisco Wednesday morning, viewing still-smoldering ru- ins. Smoking power lines dangled overhead. The con- voy stopped frequently to view the hardest-hit areas. The officials are contem- plating asking President Barack Obama for emer- gency federal assistance. Obama and Gov. Jerry Brown are expected to dis- cuss the matter Wednes- day. "It's not a pretty pic- ture," said Kim Zagaris, the state's fire chief, on the tour. "There's going to be a lot of heart break for the folks who live out here." Zagaris said officials have counted 603 homes destroyed, but that he ex- pects that number to rise. Sheriff's deputies and others have responded to a number of missing-persons reports since the fire broke out on Saturday. Many of those unaccounted for could be staying with rela- tives, on vacation or not af- fected by the fire, officials said. Aided by drought, the fire has consumed more than 109 square miles since the flames sped Saturday through rural Lake County, less than 100 miles north of San Francisco. Crews are gaining ground on the fire and were able to double containment from 15 percent to 30 per- cent Wednesday, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Dan Olson said. The weather was cooper- ating, with heavy rain fall- ing Wednesday morning. "We're trying to use that the best we can," Olson said. "Hopefully we get a little bit more rain." Someresidentshavecried as they walked through the rubble of their homes. Other residents hared amazing stories of survival as they surveyed the twisted metal and smoking ruins lefts be- hind by the fire. Ranch managers Don and Martha Grimm barely escaped with only the clothes they were wearing. The couple, both in their 70s, held hands as they re- turned to their neighbor- hood to find ruins where their home once stood. Martha Grimm broke down in tears. "We didn't have a chance to react," she said. "It was here, and we got out with the clothes on our back. All of our memories, every- thing is gone." Don Grimm said he was surprised to find chick- ens, horses and llamas on the ranch had survived the fire. But 10 sheep in a barn didn't make it. Rancher Lisa Comstock said she and her three dogs survived the raging fire in rural Middletown by jump- ing into a water trough as flames neared her home. Comstock was also able to keep her horses nearby as the fire burned around them. "The flames were coming over that moun- tain and surrounding this place like there was no to- morrow," she said. At one point she was sure she wasn't going to make it. But talking to her animals helped her and the animals keep calm. "If this is how I go, I'm not leaving these animals. That's all I could think of," she said. NORTHERN CALIFORNIA Mo re b odi es e xp ec te d to b e fo un d in fi re PHOTOSBYELAINETHOMPSON—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS Sabrina Jose holds her head as she walks past family photos lining a stairwell a er grabbing some of her daughter's possessions during a brief, escorted visit to her home Wednesday in Middletown. Jose's still-standing home was surrounded by the remains of houses burned to the ground in a wildfire days earlier. Aided by drought, the flames have consumed up to 1,000homes since the fire sped Saturday through rural Lake County, less than 100miles north of San Francisco. Firefighter Jeff Ohs looks into a burned out car that was also hit by a tree at the Harbin Hot Springs. By Ken Ritter The Associated Press LAS VEGAS Water manag- ers in Los Angeles and Las Vegas are poised to adopt a drought-driven deal to send enough water to serve about 300,000 homes an- nually from the Lake Mead reservoir to Southern Cal- ifornia. The Southern Nevada Water Authority board is due on Thursday to con- sider a water agreement that would have the Met- ropolitan Water District of Southern California pay $45 million for 150,000 acre-feet of water. The Metropolitan district board is set to consider ap- proving the deal Monday and Tuesday. "We'll be trading dollars for water, and then back again," said Jeffrey Kight- linger, general manager of Metropolitan, which serves about 19 million Southern California customers. "As a practical mat- ter, we'll use the water during drought and re- turn it, bucket for bucket, when they need it," he said Wednesday. "It all balances over time." Sending water to Cali- fornia could, over the short term, drop the closely watched surface level el- evation at Lake Mead about 9 inches, said John Entsminger, general man- ager of the Southern Ne- vada Water Authority. On Wednesday, the lake level was 1,078 feet above sea level, just 3 feet above a 1,075-foot trigger point that would require a percentage cut in water supplies to Ari- zona and Nevada. But Entsminger said the lake level should recover in plenty of time for crucial January 2016 and January 2017 point-in-time measure- ments for such a drought declaration. He called the deal with Southern Cali- fornia "elevation-neutral for Lake Mead." Still, if the lake level drops below 1,045 feet, California is obligated to return 75,000 acre-feet to the lake. Las Vegas currently gets about 90 percent of its drinking water from the vast Colorado River reser- voir behind Hoover Dam. Entsminger and Kight- linger noted the lake loses about 3 percent of is volume annually to evaporation in the arid desert heat. Las Vegas has water to spare because of conser- vation and reuse programs that over the last decade have cut water use from 325,000 acre-feet in 2002 to 220,000 acre-feet today, ac- cording to the Southern Ne- vada Water Authority. An acre-foot is about enough to serve two homes for a year. At the same time, the Las Vegas-area population has grown an estimated 25 per- cent, to about 2 million peo- ple. The region also hosts more than 40 million tour- ists a year. Entsminger said a decade of aggressive efforts to iden- tify supplies and bank re- sources have built Las Vegas a seven-year supply cush- ion with about 1.5 million acre-feet of water banked in Nevada, California and Arizona. Some of that wa- ter is injected into under- ground aquifers, where it can be pumped out. Some is stored in above-ground reservoirs that are prone to evaporation. The Southern Nevada Water Authority currently banks 205,000 acre-feet of water with Metropolitan. The new agreement would add another 150,000 acre- feet. The water officials said the evaporation rate be- came a crucial calculus for the deal between two agen- cies. "They can either bank water in Lake Mead and watch it evaporate before they need it, or they can bank it with us," Metropol- itan's Kightlinger said. LAKE MEAD Las Vegas, Los Angeles-area agencies ink water-for-cash deal JOHN LOCHER — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Recreational boaters ride by a bathtub ring that delineates the high water mark at Lake Mead in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada. By Astrid Galvan The Associated Press SIERRA VISTA, ARIZ. The U.S. Border Patrol does not go far enough to pro- tect Southwestern ranch- ers from smugglers and others who cross the Mex- ican border illegally, the businessmen said Wednes- day during a conference of border sheriffs in Arizona. Several of the ranchers said they don't bother call- ing agents anymore when they encounter illegal ac- tivity on their property, but the federal government says it has taken steps to boost safety. Paul Beeson, the com- mander for the Customs and Border Protection Joint Field Command in Arizona, said there is much less activity on the Ari- zona-Mexico border now than in recent years, and that the bulk of crossings happen in south Texas. The agency, parent agency of Border Patrol, is committed to securing the border and has created three task forces to tackle safety issues, he said. "We want to do every- thing we can to stop it. We have a difference of opin- ion on how we do that, but this situation is not OK," Beeson said. Many ranchers say the government should stop immigrants at the inter- national border, not after they cross it. They offer dif- ferent solutions on safety issues but agree that some- thing needs to be done. Jim Chilton, whose ranch is less than 6 miles from the border, said the agency's strategy is not working. He said it takes too long for agents to re- spond to calls from ranch- ers and that the Border Pa- trol should focus its efforts on stopping migrants and smugglers at the border. Chilton says he installed three motion cameras that have caught 350 people walking through his ranch in the last two years. "We need a wall on my ranch. It's 25 miles of barb- wire fence," Chilton said. Ed Ashurst said ranch- ers rely heavily on border sheriffs for protection and recalled the death of his friend, border rancher Rob Krentz, who was found gunned down on his Ari- zona property in 2010. SMUGGLERS Ranchers say Border Patrol not protecting them ASTRID GALVAN — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Rancher Ed Ashurst, third from le , criticizes the federal government over its enforcement of border safety during a meeting for border sheriffs in Sierra Vista, Arizona, on Wednesday. Ashurts owns a ranch 20miles north of the border with Mexico, east of Douglas, Ariz. Others are unidentified. | NEWS | REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2015 8 A