More Evacuees From California Wildfires Go Home, Evacuations Ordered For New Northern Calif. Blaze

UPDATE 3:28 p.m.: (AP) - About 60 people remain unaccounted for in Napa and Sonoma counties, down from roughly 100 on Monday.

Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano said Tuesday 53 people remain as reported missing more than a week after deadly wildfires started in Northern California's wine country. The city of Santa Rosa is investigating 26 of those reports.

The county received nearly 2,000 reports of people missing, but most of the people have been located. Sonoma County also referred three dozen names of missing to other counties.

He said the number of dead remains at 22.

Napa County reported eight people on its unaccounted list.

It was unclear how many people are actually missing because reports have included duplicate names or names of people who were safe but unable to call relatives. Some people reported as missing also never knew someone had been looking for them.

(AP) - More people displaced by Northern California wildfires have been told they can go home.

The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office said Monday night that evacuation orders have been lifted for two neighborhoods in Santa Rosa, a city of 175,000 people. Many harder hit neighborhoods in the city remain under evacuation orders.

Residents of the wine-country towns of Geyserville and Healdsburg have also been told they can go home.

Firefighters are battling a new fire that sprang up overnight in the southern Bay Area Santa Cruz mountains, prompting evacuation orders.

Rob Sherman, assistant chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, tells KNTV news that at least one structure is destroyed and about 100 homes threatened.

Sherman said that a house fire is believed to have sparked the quick-spreading blaze.

Firefighters plan to attack the flames from air once the sun rises.

A cluster of wildfires have been burning in northern California for a week. The fires, the deadliest cluster in California history, have killed at least 41 people and destroyed nearly 6,000 homes. Most of the dead were in Sonoma County.