Camp Fire Now Deadliest in California History, 42 Dead, More Missing; Israel, Gaza Militants Trade Deadly Rocket, Mortar Fire
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: This as the camp fire has become the deadliest wildfire in the state's history. At least 42 people have died in that blaze.</s>JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Many of those deaths in the Town of Paradise. This home reduced to ashes, a mailbox now all that stands remaining. Dan Simon, he is in Paradise with more. I mean, we have heard people say, you know, why would God take away a town named Paradise? But there really is just shock and sadness there.</s>DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It really is. And let me first explain where I am. This one of the first burned out structures I saw when I first came to Paradise. This is a Safeway grocery store. I wanted to come back here today and show you because it's just so massive, how big this is. And you can see just the destruction inside. And it's representative of the bigger problem that you have in the Town of Paradise. We're talking about a small town, and quite frankly, a lot of people relied on this grocery store. And so, you know, going forward, it's going to be really challenging because you have to rebuild businesses just like this. In the meantime, we got that horrible news yesterday that the death toll has risen. We're now looking at 42. That's a record for the amount of fatalities for a wildfire in California. And all along, officials fear that the death toll would continue to go up because this fire spread so quickly and combined with the fact that you have a lot of elderly retirees who live in the Town of Paradise. We know that's going to be the focus today. More search and recovery crews are on their way to Paradise to look for more bodies. And you also have the grim task of trying to identify the victims, so many of them were badly burned, beyond recognition, quite frankly. So officials are asking folks in the community. They're asking loved ones to provide DNA samples so ultimately those remains can be identified. In terms of the overall fire itself. Right now, it's 30 percent contained. There hasn't been much growth in the past few days. So that's good, but obviously, looking for those bodies today is going to be key, and just one other thing. Perhaps you can see just how smoky the conditions are outside. That's another thing that folks here are battling. We'll send it back to you guys.</s>HARLOW: Wow.</s>SCIUTTO: Don't sit there for a long time, going to take a long time to recover. Dan Simon thanks very much. About 500 miles south of Paradise, near Malibu, the Woolsey Fire, as it's called, that intensified overnight. The fire now has scorched more than 96,000 acres. Crews could soon be facing up to 60 miles per hour winds today. Fanning the flames, at least two people killed while they were likely fleeing this fire over the weekend. State-wide, more than 8,000 firefighters are now battling those flames. A lot of you have asked about this, for ways that you can help those affected, hurt by the California wildfires. Please go to CNN.com/impact.</s>HARLOW: All right. Israel may be pulling back from the brink of war after an incredibly volatile 24 hours. Hundreds of rockets and mortars have been raining down on both sides of the Israeli/Gaza border. You see some of the shots in the middle of the night there.</s>SCIUTTO: There are sadly casualties on the ground. CNN's Oren Liebermann is in Sderot, Israel, and he joins us now. Still lighting up the sky as you have been seeing?</s>OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It has been now a few minutes of quiet, perhaps over the last hour or so, we have not seen any red alerts indicating rocket fire or mortar fire from Gaza and we have not heard any Israeli airstrikes. We have not gotten any reports of those from our CNN teams inside Gaza. Just over the course of the last few minutes, we have gotten statements from Hamas as well as a Hamas source telling CNN that a cease-fire has been reached between Israel and Gaza. Egypt and the United Nations have worked frantically over the course of the last 24 hours to get to this point, to get to the point of a cease-fire. Israel generally does not comment or does not confirm any acknowledgment of any cease-fire and they haven't commented in this case. Yet what they have said in the past is simply quiet will be met with quiet. If this cease-fire holds, it brings to an end the most volatile, worst 24 hours in terms of hostilities between Israel and Gaza since the end of the 2014 war. The Israeli military says more than 400 rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza into Israel. Many have been intercepted by Israel's iron dome aerial defense system. A number have hit residential areas including one that hit a residential building inside Ashkelon City near where we're standing right now in Israel. One person was killed in that rocket attack, making that the first person killed in a rocket strike in Israel since the 2014 war. In that wave of Israeli airstrikes carried out against Gaza, against largely Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic - military targets, the Palestinian Ministry of Health says seven Palestinians have been killed. A number of others have been injured. Poppy and Jim, the critical question now is this cease-fire in fact in place and is it holding as we head into the dark hours here?</s>HARLOW: Yes, a very important question. Oren, thank you for being there and reporting for us. Ahead for us, a grieving family says a security guard just doing his job when he was shot dead by police. Now they're demanding to know why.