California fires: at least 15 killed in 'unprecedented' wine country blaze

Wildfires leave 150 missing and destroy 2,000 structures and large swaths of land, as powerful winds fuel 'an inferno like you've never seen before'

At least 15 people have died in northern California after what officials are describing as an "unprecedented" wildfire that has already destroyed 2,000 structures and devastated large swaths of wine country.

"We often have multiple fires going on, but the majority of them all started right around the same time period, same time of night - it's unprecedented," Amy Head, the fire captain spokeswoman for Cal Fire, the state agency responsible for fire protection, told the Guardian. "I hate using that word because it's been overused a lot lately because of how fires have been in the past few years, but it truly is - there's just been a lot of destruction."