Praise for Paradise
“In a remarkable feat of empathetic reporting, Paradise takes us inside the lives of people facing a rapidly unfolding horror. Lizzie Johnson has a masterful command of this rich and tragic story, and to read it is to experience a visceral sense of the fear, uncertainty, and ultimately resilience of those who fought their way through it. If you think you know the story of the Camp Fire, one of the deadliest in U.S. history, think again. Equal parts thriller, investigation, and deeply rendered portrait of an American town, Paradise will leave you breathless.”
—Evan Ratliff, author of The Mastermind
“This book kept me up reading late into the night and then buried itself so deep in my head that I couldn’t fall asleep. Lizzie Johnson has written the rare page-turner built on empathy and rigorous reporting. Paradise is both a definitive account of California’s historic wildfire and a crucial warning of the disasters to come.”
—Eli Saslow, author of Rising Out of Hatred
“In Paradise, Lizzie Johnson masterfully weaves together stories of improbable survival and immeasurable loss to create a compelling portrait of a community brought to its knees by a ferocious fire stoked by the forces of greed, mismanagement, and the worsening effects of a warming climate. This is a book about the strength of the human spirit, and also an urgent and necessary call for action.”
—Fernanda Santos, author of The Fire Line
“This account of the deadliest wildfire in California history is a triumph of reportage and storytelling. Out of the ash, Lizzie Johnson has written a memorial to its victims, a tribute to its heroes and survivors, and a reckoning of its kindling and match. Among the culpable, we find ourselves.”
—Mark Arax, author of The Dreamt Land
“Paradise is an extraordinary book. The enormity of nature, the humanity and dignity of individual people confronting it—Lizzie Johnson has woven it all together brilliantly.”
—Jon Mooallem, author This Is Chance!
“[Johnson] balances the horror with compassion…. Crucial, comprehensive, and moving.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Johnson had a firsthand view of [Paradise’s] destruction (eighty-five people died) and has since put together this important minute-by-minute document of the consequences of climate change, based on frontline reporting, public records, and extensive interviews with survivors.”
—Literary Hub
“A masterly account…Johnson does for California’s deadliest wildfire what Sheri Fink did for Hurricane Katrina in Five Days at Memorial. With stellar reporting, she tells the moment-by-moment story of an unfolding disaster, showing its human dramas as well as the broader corporate and governmental missteps that fueled it…. The book is unmatched for the depth, breadth, and quality of its reporting on a major twenty-first-century wildfire, and it’s likely to become the definitive account of the catastrophe in Paradise.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Copyright © 2021 by Lizzie Johnson
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Crown and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Title page photo courtesy of Noah Berger / Associated Press
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Johnson, Lizzie, author.
Title: Paradise / Lizzie Johnson.
Description: First edition. | New York: Crown, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021012297 (print) | LCCN 2021012298 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593136386 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593136393 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Pacific Gas and Electric Company—History—21st century. | Camp Fire, Paradise, Calif., 2018. | Wildfires—California—Paradise. | Paradise (Calif.)—History—21st century.
Classification: LCC SD421.32.C2 J64 2021 (print) | LCC SD421.32.C2 (ebook) | DDC 363.37/909794—dc23
LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2021012297
LC ebook record available at lccn.loc.gov/2021012298
Ebook ISBN 9780593136393
crownpublishing.com
Maps by Jeffrey L. Ward
Cover design: Elena Giavaldi
Cover photograph: Josh Edelson/ Getty Images
ep_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Author’s Note
Maps
Part I: Kindling
Chapter 1: Dawn at Jarbo Gap
Chapter 2: All Its Name Implies
Chapter 3: Red Flag Over Paradise
Part II: Spark
Chapter 4: Code Red
Chapter 5: The Iron Maiden
Part III: Conflagration
Chapter 6: Abandoning the Hospital
Chapter 7: A Blizzard of Embers
Chapter 8: Saving Tezzrah
Chapter 9: The Lost Bus
Chapter 10: The Best Spot to Die
Chapter 11: “The Safety of Our Communities”
Part IV: Containment
Chapter 12: The Longest Drive
Chapter 13: No Atheists in Foxholes
Chapter 14: Paradise Ablaze
Chapter 15: Promise
Part V: Ash
Chapter 16: Unconfirmed Deaths
Chapter 17: Mayor of Nowhere
Chapter 18: Secondary Burns
Chapter 19: Rebirth
Chapter 20: Reckoning
Epilogue: Reburn
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Notes
In Memory of Those Who Died
About the Author
Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair, to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows sky-high.
—Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
KONKOW LEGEND
I first learned of the Konkow legend on a chilly spring day in March 2019, as I stood high on a plateau above the town of Concow. The director of the Butte County Fire Safe Council had invited me and two dozen others on a tour of the burn zone of the Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California history, which had occurred four months before. By this point, she had given several of these tours to politicians and civilians alike; she hoped that people would leave better educated about the state’s fire risk and what could be done about it.
From our vantage point, the reservoir was a dark bruise ringed by charred evergreen forest. As residents commiserated over their losses, remarking on how hot the Camp Fire had burned and how fast it had moved, a couple from the Konkow tribe, who happened to be on the tour, offered to share a story.
Their ancestors, they said, had once witnessed a wildfire similar to the one Butte County had just experienced. Two young boys had thrown pitch pine sticks onto a campfire, accidentally igniting a conflagra
tion. The outcome was horrible. Most of the tribe died, and the few who survived had been forced to move north. This tale, they said, had been passed down through the generations and later translated into English. Hearing the story that afternoon, I was struck by how the Konkow legend offered a remarkable glimpse into the past—something never captured in modern statistics and rarely by history textbooks—of what tribal ancestors had witnessed long before white settlers arrived and displaced them, before housing developments were carved into sacred land.
Later, I asked the couple if they might be willing to send me a recording of the legend. They kindly agreed. Elements of their tale have been interspersed throughout this book.
To me, the legend illustrates the cyclical nature of wildfires and suggests how we can better adapt as the climate changes. Managing fire, as Native Americans have done for thousands of years, rather than fighting it at every turn, can prevent tragedy. The Konkows once cultivated low-intensity burns, scorching the forest floor as a vegetation management practice. The technique was widely used—until European settlers, who viewed fire as unnatural and evil, arrived and quashed it. Conflagrations could still prove deadly, as the Konkow tale shows, but the land always healed and regenerated, healthier for the burn. Even today, the tribe maintains a deep respect for fire.
We can all learn something from the Konkows’ knowledge and stewardship of the environment, and their kinship with nature. Their legend serves as a call to protect these spaces for future generations—in part to honor those who lived on this land before us.
KONKOW LEGEND
In the beginning, Wahnonopem, the Great Spirit, made all things. Before he came, everything on the earth and in the skies was hidden in darkness and in gloom, but where he appeared, he was the light. From his essence, out of his breath, he made the sun, the moon, and the countless stars and pinned them in the blue vault of the heavens. And his Spirit came down upon the earth, and there was day; he departed, and the darkness of night closed again upon the place where he had stood. He returned, and the light shone upon the Konkows and all the other living creatures upon the earth, in the waters, and in the skies; the wildflowers bloomed in the valleys and on the mountainsides; the song of the birds was heard among the leaves of the madrone and on the boughs of the pines; and the hours of the day and of the night were permanently established.
This is the story of the Konkow tribe of the Meadow Valley Lands, as brought forward and told in the stillness of the nights, around the campfires, by the old men, the scholars, and the priests.
CHAPTER 1
DAWN AT JARBO GAP
For weeks, Captain Matt McKenzie had longed for rain. It would signal the end of wildfire season, which should have concluded by now, but November had brought only a parched wind. The jet stream was sluggish, failing to push rainclouds up and over the Sierra Nevada into Northern California. Since May 1, 2018, Butte County—150 miles northeast of San Francisco and 80 miles north of Sacramento—had received only 0.88 inches of precipitation. The low rainfall broke local records. It was now November 8, and with three weeks to go until Thanksgiving, the sky remained a stubborn, unbroken blue. Plants withered and died, their precious moisture sucked into the atmosphere. Oak and madrone shook off their brittle leaves.
Ponderosa pine needles fell like the raindrops that refused to come, pinging against the fire station’s tin roof and waking McKenzie from a deep sleep around 5:30 a.m. A pinecone landed with a thud. He curled up on the twin bed in his station bedroom, feet poking from under the thin comforter, and oriented himself in the darkness. He didn’t feel ready for the day to begin. Blackness edged the only window. Outside, gale force winds wailed through the hallway. He pulled aside the window blinds for confirmation: no rain. The sliver of a waxing moon and winking stars pricked the sky’s endless dark. In an hour, the sun would rise.
After more than two decades of firefighting, McKenzie, forty-two, possessed a certain clairvoyance. He had dedicated half his life to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, helping to battle conflagrations that sprouted in the vastness of California during its fire season. In such a huge state, urban departments could cover only so much ground; there had to be a larger force to stop fires before they burned too far or too fast in the wilderness bordering cities and towns. Known as Cal Fire, the state agency was one of the largest dedicated wildland firefighting forces in the world.
McKenzie had learned to read the agency’s weather reports like tea leaves. When conditions were right, all it took was a spark to ignite an inferno. McKenzie and his crew were trained to anticipate and react aggressively, jumping into action while the fires were still small and easily contained. Nothing was left to chance. They did this the old-fashioned way, by digging dirt firebreaks and spraying water from their engines. The method was effective: Only 2 to 3 percent of the wildfires they tackled ever escaped their control. But fires broke out all over California every year, and members of his outpost, Station 36, were called upon to help quench the most destructive ones as part of the state’s mutual aid agreement, by which jurisdictions pledged to help each other out during emergencies. The crew spent the year crisscrossing the state, from barren Siskiyou to coastal San Diego.
Innocuous mishaps—a golf club or lawn mower striking a rock, a malfunctioning electric livestock fence, a trailer dragging against the asphalt, a catalytic converter spewing hot carbon—could beget a blaze. More often, though, fires were started by downed electrical lines. They would snap and spark in high winds, showering embers and grief across entire communities. Lately, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the largest power provider in California, was experimenting with shutting off power when high fire risk was forecast.
In a remotely operated weather site near McKenzie’s fire station, an anemometer was whirring, generating the next forecast. Surrounded by chain-link fencing, the instrument thrummed atop a slender tripod 20 feet tall, its three cupped hands circling faster and faster. It registered winds blowing at 32 mph, with gusts up to 52 mph. That November morning, wind wasn’t the only problem. Relative humidity plummeted to 23 percent and continued dropping. It was forecast to hit 5 percent by noon—drier than the Sahara Desert.
* * *
—
MCKENZIE RAN A HAND through his silvered hair and swung his feet to the tile floor, trudging to the bathroom with a towel slung over one arm. Standing six foot one, he was tall and slim, with deep dimples and piercing blue-gray eyes. He had led Station 36 for four years and treasured its cowboy grit and strong camaraderie with the community, mostly retirees, loggers, off-the-gridders, and marijuana growers. McKenzie was now in the middle of a seventy-two-hour shift overseeing the station, one of the oldest and most fire-prone posts in Butte County. Covering 1,636 square miles in far Northern California, the county was nearer to the Oregon border than to Los Angeles, its small valley cities and hideaway mountain towns scattered along the leeward side of the Sierra Nevada. In the past twenty-five years, flames had ravaged the foothills 103 times. The worst of them—the Poe Fire, in 2001, and the Butte Lightning Complex and Humboldt fires, both in 2008—had devastated the county’s rural communities, including those near McKenzie’s station.
His outpost was perched on a knob of land off State Highway 70, the last stop before motorists entered U.S. Forest Service jurisdiction. At an elevation of 2,200 feet, the station overlooked the Feather River Canyon and abutted the western edge of Plumas National Forest. McKenzie joked that it was built on “the road to nowhere.” A long driveway unspooled to a compound of squat tan buildings: a large garage for the fire engines, an office, and a twelve-bed barracks. Two captains—he was one of them—had rotating shifts and shared a private bedroom behind the kitchen. Everyone else slept in the dorm. At least six firefighters stayed on duty at all times, tasked with putting out house fires and responding to vehicle accidents or medical emergencies.
The men at Station 36 spent a lot of time to
gether, much of it trying to impress McKenzie, whom they admired. They competed to hike the fastest or do the most push-ups, growing close through the friendly rivalry. On slow afternoons, they would pull weeds from the station’s vegetable garden, tend its fruit trees, and play elaborate games of darts in the garage, storing their personalized game pieces in metal lockers labeled with tape. They would jam the living room armchairs against the wall and crank up the heater for floor exercises, sweating so profusely that the photos on the wall curled in their frames.
When they had a break, sometimes McKenzie and his crew would head to Scooters Café, a family-owned restaurant that—other than a hardware store, a stone lodge turned into a diner, and a market with two gas pumps—was the nearest business around. Motorcyclists choked its parking lot, waiting in a long line for Fatboy burgers—named after the Harley-Davidson motorcycle—or $2.00 beef tacos on Tuesdays. The owner of the red-walled café was a mild-mannered man who never called 911 or allowed his patrons to drive drunk. He served beer and “Scooteritas,” but no wine, and he often dropped glazed doughnuts off for the firefighters. Sometimes he scheduled karaoke nights, hosted car shows, or booked concerts. McKenzie and his crew would sit on the station lawn and listen, the music echoing uphill in the summer air.
Station 36 was a quiet place, its stillness punctuated by the occasional grumble of highway traffic and the whoosh of wind. As one week in November turned to another, still with no rain, the crew hiked to a long-ago-burned home, its gardens lush with unkempt fig trees and wild blackberry thickets, and foraged for fruit to bake a cobbler. They responded to accidents at Sandy Beach, where swimmers like to launch themselves into the Feather River with a rope swing and sometimes got stuck in the currents. They scanned the canyon for smoke.
Paradise Page 1