Paradise

by Lizzie Johnson

  Norman nodded. He could help by opening the road for them. Checking first for any straggling civilians, he peeled out onto the Skyway in his SUV and began to ram the deserted cars near Walgreens, trying to push them off the pavement with brute force. Metal struck metal with a grating keen. If his airbag deployed, it could give him a bloody nose, knock out his front teeth, or worse. Rethinking the decision, Norman called out to an engine from another county. The command structure was now in disarray, and a branch or division supervisor like Norman could step in with a new assignment for a crew at any moment. “Start ramming cars off the road,” Norman yelled at the engineer. The man looked at him, perplexed, as he gripped the steering wheel. This wasn’t in his job description. “Do it!” Norman shouted.

  As he gave orders, the intersection swelled with a fresh wave of people. A school bus ferrying a group of evacuees from Paradise Alliance Church had crashed into a ditch, he learned. Some of the passengers had medical issues, and they begged Norman for help. He sorted them into strangers’ cars. Speaking into his radio, he pleaded with the Emergency Command Center in Oroville for a bulldozer or some other piece of heavy machinery to smash through the traffic. The out-of-county engine had managed to open one lane on the Skyway, but it wasn’t enough. “I need an additional bus to the Walgreens,” Norman said into his radio. “We are sheltering people as best we can.”

  He directed a thin stream of vehicles forward through the open lane, parceling people off into backseats, one by one. A few unruly drivers wouldn’t stop honking. “I have a fire-resistant suit,” one man said, pulling up next to Norman. “So I’m gonna go ahead.”

  “Okay, great. I don’t care. I need you to put this lady in your truck.”

  “I don’t even know her!” the driver protested. His dog snarled in the back of the pickup.

  Norman leaned over and met the man’s eyes. “I don’t give a shit. She’s a human being. I need you to put her in your truck.” The man acquiesced, grumbling.

  As the final passengers were loaded into the crew buggies, Norman followed the out-of-county engine uphill to make sure the rest of his division was safe. He knew there were people to the north who needed his help. By this point, only first responders were heading uphill; everyone else was being sent to safety on the valley floor. The engine crew planned to douse the dozens of vehicles that had caught fire on the Skyway. They pushed past Wagstaff Road, where Jamie and Tezzrah had been sheltering at Needful Things, and punched through the gridlock as Norman had ordered. At the tip of the Skyway, the thoroughfare connected to Clark Road before climbing to Magalia. The Y-shaped intersection was flanked by a strip mall. Norman noticed that about 150 people were sheltering in the mall’s bowl-shaped parking lot with his colleague, Cal Fire engineer Calin Moldovan.

  A Romanian refugee, Moldovan, thirty-four, had fled his then Communist home country as an eleven-year-old. His parents sought political asylum in the United States, settling with the boy in the Sacramento suburbs. For years, Moldovan had worked in construction, importing stone from Brazil and Italy and installing countertops and fireplaces in custom-built homes, before fulfilling his lifelong dream of becoming a firefighter. He had taken a major pay cut, but it had been worth it: Moldovan wanted to help people, as others had helped him. As a child, he had once seen a straw-thatched home in his village catch fire. Neighbors helped push furniture out the window and dump buckets of water on the blaze. “It was a very third-world-country way of tackling a fire,” Moldovan recalled. “I remember the chaos, and how everyone helped. Something inside of me was drawn to it.” Now Moldovan worked out of Station 33 in Magalia—which, according to reports, had just caught fire. He had tried to reach it, but with flames to the north and south, his route had been blocked.

  Moldovan was forced to stay in place and direct reluctant drivers into the parking lot for their own safety. Some of them now hunched against a cluster of buildings. In the strip mall, there were two metal-roofed structures under construction, a coffee shop and Optimo Lounge, a nightspot known for its midpriced Chinese food and live tribute bands. On holidays, the restaurant served patrons free chicken chow mein until midnight to offset the liquor. To the south was Fins, Fur & Feather Sports, a fishing and hunting store that sold ammunition. Across the street, on the corner of Clark Road, was a Fastrip gas station. To the north was a gigantic propane yard. Looking around, Moldovan realized that the intersection was ringed by highly flammable businesses. If any of them caught fire, they could kill everyone in the parking lot.

  Kneeling on the concrete, people prayed. One woman was lying on the ground in the fetal position, sobbing inconsolably. She watched as her home across the Skyway burned down, the walls falling inward as the roof collapsed. “Why aren’t you stopping it!” she moaned, staring daggers in Moldovan’s direction. “Why aren’t you doing anything?” Another woman was going into diabetic shock; a Paradise Police officer found some shortbread cookies for her. A county employee flashed her badge, demanding that Moldovan open up the Skyway.

  “Why aren’t you getting us out?” a man added.

  “I can open the road, but you won’t make it very far,” Moldovan said, thinking darkly of the blockade of cars downhill near the Walgreens.

  He’d just heard on the radio that one lane of traffic had been cleared by a fire engine, though, and hoped to send ten cars toward it at a time. But Captain Norman’s arrival put an end to Moldovan’s plan. The sides of Norman’s vehicle were warped from the heat—proof of the peril that lay between the parking lot and the open lane farther downhill.

  Regardless, Moldovan was thrilled to see the captain. Norman had a higher rank and more experience, which meant Moldovan was no longer in charge. Norman instructed Moldovan to force his way into one of the locked buildings so they could shelter the 150 people inside. “We’ll break every door if we have to,” Norman said. The concrete parking lot would act as a moat, cleared of vegetation, debris, and any other flammable materials. That, along with the new shopping center’s adherence to updated building codes, might be their salvation.

  The legislature had indicated as much in the early 2000s, noting that certain structural features, like wood shake roofs and unscreened attic vents, made houses more vulnerable to wildfires. In 2008, California had become the first state in the country to pass building codes with the wildland-urban interface in mind, mandating fire-resistant construction in new houses. But it wasn’t an instant fix—the rules didn’t apply to existing homes. In places like Paradise, where nine out of ten houses had been built before 1990, the change had little effect. Residents couldn’t afford to retrofit their homes—simply replacing single-pane windows in a house could cost upwards of $10,000—and the state offered no incentive to do so. On average, the homes in Paradise were three decades old. Only about 350 houses in the previous ten years had been built to the new standards. (Of them, 51 percent would survive the Camp Fire, compared to 18 percent of the 12,100 homes constructed before then.)

  Defensible space might have protected some of these neighborhoods—but not everyone cleared the mandatory 100 feet of land around their homes, as Travis did so zealously at his bungalow on Edgewood Lane. Some retired or disabled residents weren’t physically capable of the work, nor could they spare the money for a landscaper. Other folks simply couldn’t be bothered. Cal Fire mailed warnings to residences in violation, but the agency rarely issued fines; there was little muscle to enforce them. (From 2009 to 2018, the Butte County Cal Fire unit inspected 29,776 properties. It issued one citation.) In Paradise, a legal mandate didn’t even exist. When the Town Council adopted a new nuisance abatement ordinance in 2011, the five members had inadvertently eliminated the requirement for defensible space. They hadn’t read the document closely enough to realize that someone had neglected to copy and paste the language into the new legislation. (Nine years later, as he updated citation forms in 2020, Messina would be the first to notice that the ordinance had dis
appeared from the municipal code and would rectify the omission.)

  Now, as Norman and Moldovan shattered the glass doors of the Optimo Lounge with firefighting tools meant for digging firebreaks, Norman wished there was even more defensible space around the Y-shaped intersection. He glanced up. More than a dozen people were recording him on their cellphones. What a weird impulse, he thought, wondering if this was how his wife and children would witness his final moments. He herded people inside the empty building, as if they were boarding an airplane or a lifeboat: the elderly and infirm first, followed by families with children.

  Norman sighed. He was exhausted, his body as weary as if he had been awake for twenty-four hours. On the Skyway, he saw officers unloading a semi truck of Pepsi, preparing to use the truck as a makeshift shield in case the flames slunk closer. Above their heads, a helicopter shuddered in the wind, its Bambi Bucket of water nearly scraping the tops of the ponderosa pines as it headed for a nearby gas station. With a whoosh, the pilot completed his drop—but in the thick smoke, he missed his target. Not realizing the error, everyone cheered.

  * * *

  —

  KEVIN CRANKED OPEN the bus door. “Do you need a ride?” he hollered at a young woman, who was looking lost on the side of Roe Road. The twenty-year-old preschool teacher gratefully boarded Bus 963. Her car had run out of gas a few blocks back, she said, and she no longer had a way out of town. She slid into a seat in the back, passing rows of children who had gone silent, uninterested in the presence of a stranger. They were too worn out to care.

  The intersection with Neal Road neared. As the car in front of him turned, Kevin finally got a glimpse of the crossroads. Vehicles were crammed into every lane. Panicked drivers wouldn’t let the bus merge. Everything ahead of them was ablaze: houses, trees, shrubs. An inferno of vegetation. If Kevin didn’t kick the bus into gear, they were going to get caught too. In the back of the bus, Mary clutched her inhaler. Abbie closed her eyes and thought of her fiancé. Kevin gritted his teeth and pictured the twenty-two children running for their lives, scattering into the forest in every direction.

  Just then, a truck cut around the bus and blocked a lane of traffic on Neal Road. Kevin accelerated into the space and made a wide turn onto the evacuation route. The truck belonged to the Ponderosa Elementary principal, who had been tailing the bus for miles to make sure they got to safety. Kevin swung Bus 963 onto the road and hit the gas. “We’re moving!” he exclaimed, incredulous. It didn’t matter what Kevin’s friends said: Being a lowly bus driver meant something to him. On this morning, Kevin felt it. As he rolled downhill, the black sky lightened slightly.

  Abbie turned to look out the window. They were passing a familiar property on Fawnridge Court—the home of her future in-laws, where she had enjoyed many holiday meals and Sunday dinners. She spotted her fiancé’s truck parked in the driveway, and his father standing alongside it in a reflective yellow vest. Neither of the men was budging until they knew Abbie was safe. She had argued with Matt about it on the phone earlier, begging her fiancé to leave. “Nope, not doing it,” he had replied. To see him now felt like the greatest gift. Abbie waved at him, awash in emotion.

  Kevin laid on his horn, cracking the driver’s window and yelling at Abbie’s fiancé and future father-in-law: “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!”

  OBSERVATION: THE MAN IN THE TRASH TRUCK

  Dane Ray Cummings covered Waste Management’s route through Magalia and Stirling City. Every Thursday for the past eight years, the fifty-year-old had stopped at 328 homes, completing the route twice. First for the trash—driving it down to the Neal Road Recycling and Waste Facility, which everyone in town called Mount Neal—and then for the yard waste and recycling. On this morning, Dane had only 110 houses left on his route when his boss called. “Get the hell out,” his boss said, his voice crackling on the phone. The wildfire had hit Magalia. But two days earlier, Dane had received a brand-new truck that drove like a Cadillac and, in its newness, seemed fairly fireproof. He wanted to finish the route to check on his customers.

  Dane was proud to be a garbageman. The gig paid good money, around $70,000 a year—enough to support his two children, ages five and fourteen, and pay alimony. It was such a great job, in fact, that Dane celebrated his hire date—August 8, 2010—along with his parents’ and kids’ birthdays each year. The Waste Management customers adored Dane. At Christmas, they left batches of foil-wrapped coconut cream balls and peanut brittle atop their garbage bins. Sometimes the residents waited for his truck to show up so they could shake Dane’s hand and chat as he loaded their garbage. They knew all about his divorce, which had ended with Dane getting full custody of his children—though as a single parent, he didn’t always have a good handle on them. He cared enough to know all about his customers’ lives too. Now he saw it as his duty to make sure they had all safely evacuated.

  Dane knew that power had gone out on the Ridge around 10 a.m. If residents couldn’t manage to open their garage doors, some of them wouldn’t be able to leave. Margaret Newsum was facing that exact problem, as he discovered after checking about fifty houses. She was waiting in the doorway of her yellow home, wearing a pink T-shirt and leaning on her walker. Margaret was ninety-three years old but “never missed a lick,” as Dane put it. She and her husband, Buck, had bought their home on a cul-de-sac in Magalia in 1957. They had been married for forty-five years when he died of lung cancer in 1990. Margaret was lonely afterward but stayed involved with her church and visited the salon twice a week to get her hair set. She had never eaten much sodium and had stopped driving at ninety. She attributed her longevity to these factors. “You make your life what you want it to be,” she liked to say.

  “What the heck are you doing here?” Dane asked her.

  “My caretaker went down to Chico this morning, and she can’t get back up here.” She had tried to call others for help, to no avail.

  “Do you have any family?” he asked.

  When she said no, Dane helped collect her three prescriptions and her walker. Then he threw Margaret over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and, huffing and puffing, carried her back toward the trash truck. Two young men spotted them and ran onto Margaret’s front lawn to help, lifting her into the front seat and buckling her in place.

  “It’s against your company rules to have a passenger!” Margaret protested, not wanting to get Dane in trouble.

  “I don’t care,” he replied. “I’m not going to leave you here to die.”

  Before climbing into the driver’s seat, he hung her walker off the back of the trash truck.

  CHAPTER 15

  PROMISE

  Stumbling up the lava cap, his friends motionless behind him, Travis paused to unlock his cellphone and call 911. There was just one problem—they were in the middle of nowhere. Travis knew he wouldn’t be able to describe their location to a dispatcher. And with no streets nearby, Cal Fire wouldn’t be able to send a crew. Travis needed to backtrack to find help and guide them to Paul and Suzie, but he also didn’t want to leave his friends behind. Taking one last look at them, blurred smudges in the darkness, he felt the weight of his promise to Suzie. He started the engine of his four-wheeler.

  Travis drove through coils of smoke toward his house. The quad juddered over cracked boulders and fossilized branches. The wooden bridge over the unnamed creek had turned to ash, so he splashed through the water, mud sucking at his tires. As he headed uphill, Travis realized with a jolt that his house was somehow still standing. He could see its outline through the smoke, growing sharper as he wheeled closer. His neighbors Mike and Jeanette were dousing flames in the gutters and ripping off chunks of siding. Embers had burrowed inside one wall and ignited the insulation. “They’re going to be so mad you’re ruining their house!” Jeanette shouted at her husband. But they needed to destroy the side of the house to save it—and themselves.

  For the past hour, they
had hunched behind the southern edge of Travis’s home, using the structure as a windbreak. They had planned to submerge themselves in a creek, but the fire had moved too fast. It was just as well—the stream water was close to boiling. From behind Travis’s house, they saw the wind blast through like a napalm explosion, cutting through the brush and shattering the windows. “We would’ve been wiped off the face of the earth if we had gone to the creek,” Mike now told Travis. Their house had been destroyed, he said, so they were trying to save his. Travis explained that Paul and Suzie had been badly burned. He called 911 with Mike by his side.

  “Have the units go down South Libby Road as far as they can,” Mike told Travis. The dirt road ran parallel to Edgewood Lane, and it would help the crew get as close to the couple as possible. As a contract firefighter, Mike spoke the language of firefighters, and the dispatcher listened. “I’ll be waiting on my four-wheeler,” Travis told her, then stepped back onto his quad. He was anxious to return to his friends; he couldn’t imagine how terrified they must be, crippled and abandoned as fire burned around them. Mike turned up the volume on his radio, straining to listen to Cal Fire’s frequency. A team was being dispatched to South Libby Road.

  As Travis left to intercept the crew, he crossed paths with a man driving from the other side of Edgewood, near where the street ended. The fenders of his green Jeep Cherokee were melting, and the bumper had liquefied. His clothes were wet, pinpricked with holes where burning embers had struck him. He rolled down his window. “Whatever you do—do not go down—to the end of the road,” he stammered to Travis. He and his friends had tried to escape, he explained, but they had been “trapped like rats.” His speech came in disjointed bursts. He had survived only by abandoning his Jeep and following a fox down the banks of Dry Creek, submerging himself in the shallow water. When he had returned to his car forty-five minutes later, the worst of the firestorm was over. His Jeep was still running, and his chihuahuas, Romey and Jules, were alive in the backseat. His friends hadn’t been so lucky.