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The confirmed death toll in relation to the Los Angeles County wildfires doubled from five to 10, the office of the Los Angeles County medical examiner confirmed during an update Thursday (January 9) night via the Los Angeles Times.
Officials had previously confirmed four deaths in relation to the 13,690-acre Eaton fire in Altadena and one in the 19,978-acre Palisades fire before giving the updated total hours later. No information was available on the identities or the location of the latest five casualties and the medical examiner warned that it could take weeks to confirm more cases due to challenges of accessing bodies in dangerous fire conditions, as well as identifying burned corpses.
“Please also keep in mind, traditional means of identification such as fingerprinting and visual identification may not be available and will add more time for naming these decedents,” the medical examiner via the Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna also confirmed that it would take time for the department to accurately report the total death toll.
“We’re still working in a very fluid and active environment, meaning that there are still spot fires going on in areas and there’s gas leaks,” Luna said via the Los Angeles Times. “So when people are asking us for numbers of fatalities, we want to give them to you, but we have to wait until it’s safe for our personnel to be able to go in there and do this right.”
More than 100,000 residents have evacuated due to the life-threatening wildfires. The Eaton and Palisades fires were reported to have caused the most devastation among the several wildfires in the county.