On Thursday morning, he had just finished a twenty-four-hour shift and was preparing for another—a rare doubleheader because staffing was short. Below the plant in Paradise, Gentry could see a heaving column of smoke floating west. Something was clearly wrong. But when he turned to his computer to check the pressure and water levels for Paradise, he discovered that the plant’s connection to the five water tanks downhill had been severed.
By the time Capra showed up for his shift, Gentry had tripled the flow in case firefighters needed extra water to battle the flames, as he had practiced the week before in a tabletop wildfire drill. About 12,000 gallons of water rushed down the slope every minute—more than 17 million gallons in all. Normally, they’d run 6 million gallons in a day. But in town, the 10,500 plastic service lines that connected homes to the thick underground main had already been damaged by the wildfire. The pipes leaked. It was like dumping water into a bucket with no bottom. Paradise’s water distribution system was separated into six zones, and all were on a slope except for one, which was fed by a 3-million-gallon tank near Clark Road and the Skyway. This tank was the first to fail. Water gushed out of the plastic distribution pipes. As the water pressure dropped, ash and toxic sludge from burnt-out homes were sucked back into the main lines, contaminating them.
Alarms flashed on Gentry’s computer screen, signaling a loss of contact with the rest of the system. He and Capra had no landline, no television, no Internet, no cell service. On the emergency frequency of their handheld radio, they could hear trapped firefighters screaming for their colleagues to rescue them. Gentry and Capra could do nothing but listen to the panic of grown men who believed that they were going to die. “We have live power lines coming down on some people here on Wagstaff,” a division chief shouted. “We need to open this intersection. I got people trapped all through here!” Then came the sound of a fire engine, its driver reporting over the radio that flames had overtaken the cardiology wing. The hospital, thought Gentry.
Out the window, he and Capra saw half a dozen Cal Fire contract pilots dip Bambi Buckets into Magalia Reservoir, the huge helicopter pails dangling at the end of long cables. The aircraft droned laboriously as they departed, carrying the water downhill. Capra and Gentry’s bosses had told the men to leave if they ever felt unsafe, but the treatment plant seemed the best place to be. The metal roof certainly wasn’t going to burn. Besides, they had plenty of water.
CHAPTER 9
THE LOST BUS
The doors of Bus 963 closed. Kevin wrenched the steering wheel, turning onto Pentz Road and peering through the dark smoke. Cinders tumbled from the clouds, igniting thousands of small fires along the roadside. Kevin planned to cut across town to reach Clark Road—the second-largest thoroughfare in Paradise, capable of accommodating nine hundred cars per hour—then head to Oroville. Traffic was piling up on Pentz Road, and he didn’t want to get stuck.
Behind him, the twenty-two schoolchildren in the bus were silent, an eerie contrast to the regular din of his route. These were Paradise kids, not the hardened Magalia students he usually drove. When the wildfire had been reported, he was the bus driver closest to Ponderosa Elementary and had offered to help out. The children, too small to see over the tops of the seats, were nearly invisible in his rearview mirror. Kevin spotted a golden yellow beanie and a blue tie-dyed baseball cap. He didn’t know their names; they didn’t know his.
“Who are you?” Mary Ludwig, fifty-one, a second grade teacher, had asked when Kevin had first pulled up at Ponderosa Elementary.
She had never seen him before, which she found odd. Mary had taught in the district since 1994 and thought she knew every bus driver. She was friendly with a lot of people in Paradise; she and her nine siblings had grown up there. She was the second-youngest, and the first to be born in Paradise. Her father had been a teacher at Biggs Elementary in the valley. Everyone knew his raucous brood. It was hard for the Ludwig kids to go anywhere—the Fosters Freeze, Stratton’s Market—without someone striking up a conversation.
Mary had shiny chestnut hair and a warm personality. She was a small-town girl who had married a small-town boy, moved to the big city of Chico for five years, then returned to escape the traffic and noise. She didn’t hesitate to pull complete strangers into tight hugs or share a funny story from her classroom. She liked crafting creative lesson plans and had recently read James and the Giant Peach to her students in an English accent, which she admitted wasn’t very good. Their latest unit had centered on understanding the momentum of a peach. The children had tossed balls down a knoll behind the classroom to study how slope affected speed.
Kevin looked at Mary. He was new, he said, but had grown up on the Ridge too. Mary’s eyes watered; she explained that her eyes felt too scratchy for contacts and she had been forced to wear her prescription sunglasses in the dim gymnasium. The children had been kept indoors, eating applesauce cups and watching an episode of The Magic School Bus until Kevin arrived. An aide had handed Mary a stack of emergency paperwork as she walked outside, guiding the remaining two students from her classroom toward the bus. Chunks of burnt bark rained down on the playground. Firebrands landed in her hair, singeing it. She tried to leave the students with Kevin, as the other teachers had. But Kevin shook his head. “I need you to come with me,” he implored. Someone needed to look after the children as he drove.
Mary hesitated. She preferred the comfort and protection of her silver Toyota Highlander, parked by the music room. She wanted to drive home and check on her teenage son, then—if she had time—pick up her daughter from work at Kmart. She had done her duty as a teacher, and there was no need to get on Bus 963. But Mary also knew that if her own kid were boarding a bus with a new driver during a natural disaster, she would want their teacher to be with them. Not wanting to be on the bus alone, she went to wrangle Abbie Davis, a first-year kindergarten teacher, into joining her. They had talked only a few times, connecting over a shared love of Dansko clogs. Abbie had a cherry-red pair; Mary wore canary yellow.
Abbie, twenty-nine, was petite and dark-haired, with thick, expressive eyebrows that betrayed every emotion. She and her twin brother had been raised by a single mother, and she intimately understood the poverty and hardship that many of her own students faced. She took pride in her classroom, spending too much of her own money to make it feel like a second home for the children. She had dedicated most of the summer to decorating, adding fake grass to a reading nook to make it feel like the outdoors and making sure each student had a wall hook for their backpack. Recently, she and her boyfriend, Matt Gerspacher, twenty-nine, had decided to get married. They had grown up together. On the first day of school, he had sent her a bouquet of flowers. Abbie knew she had gotten lucky. Now, as she boarded the bus, she hoped desperately that they would both survive to see their wedding day. Mary clambered up behind her. “You’d better be a good driver,” she told Kevin.
In his rearview mirror, Kevin watched the playground at Ponderosa Elementary disappear in the distance. He turned onto Wagstaff Road, where flames were roaring along the edges. Stumbling upon the blaze shocked Mary. The air was stifling, greased with carcinogens from burning household products. Embers lunged sideways on the downdraft. Kevin called her and Abbie to the front, pointing out the fire extinguisher and first aid kit. He gestured to the two emergency exits and emphasized that they were not going to leave the bus unless they absolutely had to. It was the safest place to be. Mary squeezed his arm, thanking him. He told the teachers to take attendance and pair older children with younger ones. “And handwrite three copies as you take roll, so each one of us has a manifest of the kids in our care.”
“Why?” Mary asked, bewildered.
“If something happens, authorities need to know who was on this bus.” Kevin fixed his eyes out the windshield, focused on the blinking brake lights up ahead.
Mary and Abbie nodded, then moved toward the back of the bus, following o
rders. Rowan Stovall, who had just turned ten, comforted her seatmate. “You’ll see your mom and dad again,” she told the kindergartner. “The bus isn’t going to catch on fire. We are going to be okay, I promise.” Her mom, who affectionately called the fourth grader Rowboat, had gotten stuck in Concow with her boyfriend. She hadn’t been able to pick her daughter up from Ponderosa Elementary, but the girl felt safe with Mary, her beloved former teacher. The two had developed a special relationship after Rowan was held back a year in Mary’s class. Rowan clutched her seatmate’s hand.
“Is it ten p.m.?” a boy in a flannel shirt asked, tugging on Mary’s shirtsleeve as she passed. He was confused; it was so dark outside. Another boy was in a panic, ripping at his hair as he babbled about how his “ninety-four-year-old” cat was going to burn up. Even more worrisome were the ones who didn’t speak at all. How do I distract the children and comfort them at the same time? Mary thought. She knelt beside a tiny girl in a zipped fleece jacket, asking her name for the manifest. The girl was so terrified that she couldn’t remember her last name. Mary rubbed her back. Across the row, she saw a backpack resting on an empty seat. A kindergartner had curled up beneath the bench, cocooning herself from the unfolding nightmare.
* * *
—
KEVIN WENT OVER different scenarios in his head, trying to figure out the best way to steer forward down Clark Road. An RV rammed in front of him, cutting the bus off. How dare you, Kevin thought, seething. Can’t you see there are children on board? He was not going to panic. He knew children were sensitive to the energy of those around them. He could see the kids’ hysteria escalate whenever Mary or Abbie took a break to stare out the windows, or record videos on their cellphones, or call their loved ones to say goodbye. The women’s voices warbled with fear. Mary’s son hadn’t evacuated soon enough and was now trapped on deadly Pearson Road, which dropped into a gully known as Dead Man’s Hole for its lack of cell service. Children, more innocently, called it the Pearson Dip. Abbie worried that her fiancé, Matt, who was refusing to leave their house on Filbert Street until he saw the bus pass by, might die because of his stubbornness.
Kevin flicked on the ceiling light so other drivers could see the children in the back of the bus. He summoned Abbie and told her that she would be his scout, pacing down the bus aisle and calling out new spot fires along Clark Road so he would know when to change lanes and keep some distance from the wildfire. He was a quick study and learned to read the arc of Abbie’s eyebrow and the tilt of her head, the subtle ways she signaled the presence of flames, not wanting to speak aloud and scare the children. Meanwhile, Mary continued scribbling down their names.
A countywide plan passed in 2010 had included a scheme for reducing fire hazards on evacuation routes like Clark Road. The Butte County General Plan for 2030, approved by the county’s Board of Supervisors, called for clearing vegetation from roads and creating alternative evacuation routes. An earlier study had recommended widening the northern portion of the Skyway—where Jamie’s wife, Erin, was trying to leave Paradise—to four lanes. But funding for these projects wasn’t allocated; that part of the Skyway was never widened.
In the late nineties, more than a hundred “fire safe councils” had popped up around California to supplement the limited efforts of local governments in places like Butte County. Though some regions, such as fire-scarred San Diego County, benefited from the help of dozens of councils—which cleared brush for disabled residents, ran woodchipper programs to pulverize dead trees, and plowed fuel breaks to halt a wildfire’s assault—others, like Butte County, did not receive nearly the same attention. The Butte County Fire Safe Council, founded in 1998, comprised one full-time employee and three part-time employees. Its annual budget was less than $500,000, and it relied mostly on state grants. The council received no dedicated funding, though the Board of Supervisors did contribute $40,000 in 2013 to prevent it from going under. “We’re filling the gap from local government on people’s preparedness, and they do little to help us,” the council director, Calli-Jane Deanda, would later explain. In August 2018, the nonprofit had received half a dozen grants totaling more than $3 million.
This funding had prevented layoffs, but there had not been enough time to enact many other improvements around the county itself. The Town of Paradise had its own council, which ran a program to educate schoolchildren about fire risks. Residents were urged to keep cloth go-bags with important documents and keepsakes by their front doors. The tactic was proposed so often that one of the council’s fifteen volunteers had been nicknamed the Bag Lady. Led by chairman Phil John and fire chief David Hawks, Paradise’s council met at Atria Senior Living on the second Wednesday of each month, often presenting to a half-empty room. John operated a $4,000 budget cobbled together from grants; Town Hall contributed no money. His was a lifetime appointment, because no one else wanted the role. He enjoyed dressing up as the council’s mascot, Wildfire Ready Raccoon, who shared John’s birthday: April 26. The beloved critter had his own trading cards and picture book, and he was present at every Gold Nugget and Johnny Appleseed Day, dancing in the parade and giving out hugs. John had also recorded an educational parody rap called “Wildfire Ready in Paradise,” set to the tune of “Gangsta’s Paradise.”
“The name’s Wildfire Ready, I don’t live in the city,” the song went. “I live up in the mountains where the trees are pretty. I got friends that are people, I got friends that are dogs. I got friends that live in houses, I got friends in logs. If you’re livin’ near the forest, there’s some things you got to know, how to keep yourself ready, in case a fire starts to grow. I’m ready. Are you ready?”
They had not been ready.
* * *
—
TWO OF THE school district’s assistant superintendents materialized out of the smoke and knocked on the glass door. Kevin startled, then opened it for them. Their truck had caught fire in the parking lot of Ponderosa Elementary and they had decided to proceed on foot. It was faster than driving anyway. Boarding the bus for a few minutes, they warned Kevin to avoid Paradise Elementary—an evacuation center and for years the town’s only elementary school—because it was already on fire. Then the two got off to continue their walk. They planned to help direct traffic.
Mary had attended high school with one of the administrators. She was comforted by the coincidence of running into him. But the blaze was everywhere, scorching the mountains and hillsides with an unprecedented fury. The red and blue spin of police lights ricocheted past as officers drove into ditches and around fallen trees, rushing in response to reports about a cluster of people, including Ben Mullin, the cardiopulmonary supervisor, trapped in the basement of Feather River hospital. They were also trying to track down a woman who had gone into labor in the Fastrip gas station parking lot. Mary pointed out the first responders to the children in a bid to distract them. “Look at those brave men coming to help us!” she said. She recognized the face of a sheriff’s deputy whose son had been in her class the previous year. He couldn’t be harmed, she thought, because his wife and two children needed him. It was the kind of illogic that made sense in moments like this—people with families couldn’t die. The children screamed through the locked windows: “Thank you, Officer Brody! We love you!” Their noses left smudges on the glass.
Beloved landmarks passed by: Paradise Alliance Church, Mountain Mike’s Pizza, McDonald’s, Dollar General. The Black Bear Diner, with its carved wooden bear propped out front, holding a sign reading WELCOME TO BEARADISE. The familiar sights brought with them a sense of hope. “Who likes pancakes?” Mary yelled, smiling broadly and raising her hand. A smattering of small palms followed. Kevin commented that he also kept a wooden bear statue in front of his house. The children laughed gleefully, because they knew that couldn’t be true—there was only one “Welcome to Bearadise” sign! The sky broke, the velvet black fading to light gray. Then the darkness closed in again. The kids watched
as flames catapulted onto the roofs of the Black Bear Diner and the McDonald’s, then spread to the KFC restaurant next door. Mary fell silent. So did the children.
As they turned onto Pearson Road and passed the intersection of Black Olive Drive, an officer directed the bus south, away from the Skyway. They had been one block away. For a short distance, they moved easily, without stopping. Looking out the window, Mary recognized the teacher’s aide from Ponderosa Elementary running along the roadside, heading toward Kmart. Mary had felt like the bus was flying, but the aide was outpacing them. Paradise’s isolated lanes and loops had become choked with cars. To the north, Rachelle and Chris were trapped on Bille Road, while Jamie was trying to weave through traffic on the Skyway. Kevin had taken a different tack, trying to escape Paradise along routes that only a native would know—but he was turned away repeatedly by law enforcement officers with out-of-town uniforms who claimed to know better. Kevin gritted his teeth and thanked them, only to curse under his breath in the next traffic snarl. The bus was pushed off Pearson Road to smaller streets: south on Foster, east on Buschmann, south on Scottwood. Luckily, a text had made it through from Kevin’s girlfriend, Melanie, letting him know that his family was safe in Chico. She had gotten a hotel room for his son and mother. A small mercy.
Roe Road appeared before them. It was dangerously narrow, its sides flanked by dead brush and ponderosa pines. Efforts to regulate vegetation here had been met with opposition; residents had feared this would lead to the logging of healthy trees. The pines had become so prized that they couldn’t be chopped down without a special permit—which cost nearly $60, with an extra $23 per tree—and even then the offending landowner had to agree to plant a new sapling, at least 15 gallons in size, within the year. Cutting down more than five large trees required an appearance before the Town Council.
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