Travis drove about 200 feet down Edgewood Lane to see for himself. The man must have been exaggerating, he thought. Perhaps people were being rescued now and he could flag down some first responders for Paul and Suzie. Up ahead was a jumble of cars, burned to their frames and submerged in a sea of molten aluminum. Their tires had evaporated, leaving the rims flush against the gravel. Even the door handles had burned off. Travis didn’t see any firefighters—or passengers. He slowed down, peeking in the blasted-out windows.
Upright in the seats, staring blankly ahead, were five skeletons. At 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, they had been cremated in their vehicles—the Camp Fire’s first fatalities. Another skeleton was crumpled facedown on the ground near an eviscerated Winnebago.
Travis recoiled in horror, bile rising in the back of his throat. He whipped his four-wheeler around and sped toward South Libby Road to wait for the firefighters, thinking only of Paul and Suzie.
* * *
—
AT FEATHER RIVER HOSPITAL, the early afternoon had brought a sense of peace. The wildfire clawed west across town, leaving Pentz Road blackened—but open. Hospital officials urged people to leave. They didn’t want patients trapped in Paradise overnight, and they worried that the other buildings might still catch fire. The emergency department was smoldering. More than six hours after they had first loaded patients into cars, first responders again organized a line of evacuees into sheriff’s vans and staff cars, preparing to send everyone downhill at last.
A sheriff’s deputy slid a blanket-covered gurney into the back of one van. The body underneath was cool and lifeless, tagged for a mortuary in Chico. The eighty-six-year-old woman with the brain bleed, who had sheltered in the garage on Chloe Court, had died on a backboard on the helipad. Elinor “Jeanne” Williams had lived with the love of her life, Robert, in a rental house on Pentz Road. The walls of their home were papered with so many family photos that in recent years her eleven great-grandchildren had sent only wallet-sized pictures, since they knew she didn’t have space for anything bigger. Jeanne had raised three daughters and worked as a housekeeper at Feather River hospital for nearly three decades. She had lived a long and full life before falling and hitting her head while using the bathroom, sustaining the brain injury that had sent her to the hospital. Jeanne’s family wouldn’t learn she had died until the following day, when they tracked down her body at a morgue in Chico. Jeanne would never hang another family photo on the wall, would never again tease her husband about his bad hearing, would never again visit her granddaughter in Oregon.
In the middle of the firestorm, a doctor and two nurses had taken the time to pray over Jeanne as morphine dripped through an IV. “Concentrate on your breathing,” the surgical unit manager had coached Jeanne, resting his warm hands on her papery skin. He and his two colleagues stayed until her breathing stilled. It was a beautiful and awful way to bear witness.
Across the parking lot, David climbed back into his white sedan with Rachelle. They turned onto Pentz Road—one of the few opened routes—and raced downhill toward Chico. He was so excited to be moving that he nearly rammed a downed electrical pole. They passed silenced emergency vehicles, half-expecting the officers to direct them back to the hospital—but no one did. Paradise was unrecognizable, block after block leveled by flames. They drove over Pearson Road to the west, where two patrol vehicles—one from the Highway Patrol, the other from the Sheriff’s Office—had crashed into the gully known as Dead Man’s Hole and caught on fire. Rachelle thought it looked like something out of the Old Testament.
Pentz Road traced the town’s eastern boundary, careening along the Feather River Canyon and past Kunkle Reservoir until, eight miles downhill, it bottomed out on the valley floor and connected to Highway 99. There David and Rachelle met a roadblock: Northbound lanes on the highway were closed. The officer stationed at the barricade wouldn’t let them turn toward Chico. David explained that Rachelle needed to be taken to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Enloe Medical Center—not the smaller facility in Oroville, which wasn’t equipped for a newborn who had spent his first day of life breathing ash. The officer wouldn’t budge. Rachelle grew hysterical. Desperate for her husband, she called Chris one more time—and finally got hold of him. After hours of trying to get in touch, their conversation was more practical than anything else. Chris had grown up in the county and knew every gravel road. He told Rachelle to meet him in the rice fields of Richvale, west of Oroville. They would find a way to Chico.
As David and Rachelle wended through the tilled farmland, a dozen other evacuees from the hospital were arriving in Oroville in a large sheriff’s van. Tammy sat in the back, holding the hand of a nursing home patient. When the doors swung open, she saw familiar faces waiting in the parking lot. Her children, all five of them, had made it out of Paradise. Tammy sobbed as she ran toward her brood, thankful for this second chance. Her five children wrapped their arms around her. Her mother had already arrived in Chico, having driven down from Oregon to be with her daughter. Soon Tammy would reunite with her.
Rachelle, too, felt a surge of emotion as she and David parked behind her husband’s white Suburban. Chris climbed out of their SUV, shook David’s hand, and thanked him for being their angel. He and Rachelle didn’t yet hug—Chris wanted to get her to the hospital. “Follow me, and I’ll get us to Enloe,” Chris said. Rachelle stayed in David’s car, since he was better equipped to handle a medical emergency if something were to go wrong. But nothing did. As they arrived in Chico less than an hour later, parking near the leafy side entrance to the hospital, Rachelle finally allowed herself to breathe. They were safe. She sobbed as she held her flimsy pink gown together, black snot dripping from her nose.
It was the busiest day in the emergency room’s 105-year history as Rachelle and forty-nine fellow patients from Feather River hospital were being rushed indoors. A nurse tucked Lincoln in the crook of her arm and settled Rachelle in a wheelchair. They had been expecting her. David waved goodbye as she was rolled indoors.
Rachelle never learned his last name. And never saw him again.
* * *
—
JAMIE PUFFED UPHILL, each step taking him farther from his daughter. He was lost and disoriented in the eddying heat. But he found his car within the grid of abandoned vehicles by listening for the reassuring chirp of its unlocking doors. He squeezed inside. He was blocked in nearly every direction. The blood-red wall of flames on the horizon blasted closer. Jamie jerked the Subaru off the Skyway and into a ditch, barreling up the dirt slope. He edged around the yellow school bus that had gotten stuck after departing Paradise Alliance Church. Ahead was empty road.
As he prepared to hit the gas, a Cal Fire captain stopped him, pointing to a ninety-one-year-old woman in a wheelchair. She was being pushed down the mountain by her caretaker.
“Do you have room?” he asked. “They need a ride.”
“Of course,” Jamie replied.
He helped load the two women inside the Subaru, folding the wheelchair and stashing it in the hatchback. Now there was nothing left to stop him. He barreled down the road, screeching to a halt in front of Jill and Tezzrah. Jill, holding Tezzrah’s hand tightly, had already told the girl that they might have to leave her father behind.
“If he isn’t here within the last bus leaving, we are getting on and going,” Jill explained, telling the seven-year-old that it might be their only way out.
But two minutes later, Jamie appeared: “See? I told you I’d come back,” he said. Jamie picked Tezzrah up, twirling her in a hug. The baggy sleeves of his jacket draped from her skinny arms.
Once everyone was loaded in the Subaru, Jamie swerved through traffic downtown. Near the Dutch Bros coffee hut, south of the Walgreens, he turned onto the sidewalk, then blasted past town limits.
“I’m sorry if I smell bad. I was so scared I peed my pants,” the caretaker whispered to Tezzrah.
“I don’t smell anything, do you?” Jill said, winking at the girl.
Just when Jamie finally thought they were in the clear, they hit flames one more time. Beneath Lookout Point, which arched over Butte Creek Canyon west of Paradise, both sides of the Skyway were being overtaken by the conflagration, which was roasting the wooden supports on the highway rails. Even the WELCOME sign, topped by an actual bandsaw blade fashioned into a metal halo, was now consumed. The token phrase—May You Find Paradise to be All Its Name Implies—was illegible. After forty-six years of standing guard at the entrance of Paradise, the sign had fallen in an avalanche of flame. The heat even warped the bandsaw, ruining the halo. The town was mostly gone, and now its most famous icon was too.
Jamie continued downhill until the fire flattened and disappeared, the black sky breaking to blue. Behind him, Paradise was walled off by smoke.
“Where are we going to sleep tonight?” Tezzrah asked, piping up from the backseat. “I don’t have my blanket.”
Jamie steered through the entrance of the Silver Dollar Fairgrounds in Chico.
“I don’t think we’ll be going home tonight,” he replied.
After dropping off the caretaker and her elderly charge at the fairgrounds, where they planned to reunite with the older woman’s family, he headed across town to another convalescent home, where the Heritage staff was congregating. Pizza had been ordered, and the scent of melted cheese filled the home’s hallways.
Jill’s partner of seventeen years was checking patients in. The women could only look at each other, unable to hug for fear of breaking down. Nearby, Jamie found his friend—the nurse who had left to find her sons—hard at work. Her family was safe. Tezzrah grabbed a paper plate, heaped it with pizza, and sat down to eat.
“How are you doing?” Jill’s partner asked.
“I don’t know,” Jamie said, blinking back tears. “I haven’t heard from Erin.”
To see so many others reunite was a reminder that his family was still incomplete. Now he thought only of his wife and their two younger daughters. Would they be a family again at the end of the day?
“Come here,” Jill’s partner said, pulling him into a hug. “I’m sorry. I’m sure it’ll be okay.”
A few hours later, after the patients had settled, Jamie and Tezzrah stepped back into his Subaru. He had finally gotten a call from his wife. It had taken several hours for Erin to reach Chico, but she hadn’t faced any difficulties, just traffic. It was late afternoon, and his younger daughters were starving. He drove to the In-N-Out Burger on Business Lane, across the street from the Chico Mall—and then he saw her. Erin was unbuckling Arrianah and Mariah from the back of her Buick Enclave. It was the most striking sight Jamie had ever seen—the woman he loved with their little girls. His family. He gazed at them, unable to look away. Erin’s long hair blew in the wind as she tried to pull their daughters out of the car. The girls sat side by side in their car seats, miniatures of each other, looking around, dazed and confused, still sick.
Jamie hurried across the asphalt to reach Erin. For a second, he stared.
“You have to help me with these kids,” Erin said, annoyed.
Their pitbull, Ginger, scratched at the windows; Tezzrah’s pet rabbit, Cinnamon, cowered in her cage. Their cat was in the car somewhere, too. Jamie reached out and folded Erin into his arms, tears running down his cheeks. He wasn’t going to let her go again—not for a second. Erin looked at her husband and started crying too. Their three girls looked on with puzzled sadness at seeing their parents weep.
* * *
—
AN OFFICER BY A barricade blocked the yellow school bus from entering Chico, where the school district had opened a reunification center at the local Mormon temple, so Kevin drove the twenty-five miles south to Biggs. The hamlet of just over two thousand people was a blip off Highway 99, an island in the vast paddies. It was known as “the heart of rice country.” Kevin pulled in to the parking lot of Pizza Roundup, an all-you-can-eat chain restaurant. The children badly needed to use the restroom. By the time they had gotten all the students through—Kevin guiding the boys’ line, Mary helping with the girls—waiters had brought out hot pans of pepperoni pizza and pitchers of soda. All of it free.
Mary flirted with the farmers chewing on barbecued chicken wings and sipping from bottles of beer at a nearby table. She tossed her straight auburn hair, cheered by this moment of normalcy. One of the farmers mentioned that they had a friend who was on the board of the Biggs Unified School District, and soon she arrived with bottled water and candy.
“You guys got out!” the woman said, hugging Mary. “Paradise has been on the news all morning.”
She offered up Biggs Elementary—where Mary’s father had once taught—as a meeting point for parents to collect their children. It was only a few blocks away. As they arrived at the school, Mary nearly cried at the sight of the familiar brick building, still standing, even as so little of her childhood remained up the hill in Paradise.
Abbie and Mary led the children inside while Kevin cleared the bus. The ceiling of his “battle wagon” was black, encrusted with layers of soot and dust. Out the window, he watched as the students staggered across the concrete, coughing. No wonder—they had been breathing this grime for most of the ride. Kevin locked the bus door and followed them into the building, where a screening of Moana had been started and applesauce handed out.
Rowan Stovall sipped a can of cherry Fanta. Her mother, Nicole Alderman, thirty-two, was one of the first to arrive. She had spent the past few hours at the Mormon temple in Chico, waiting with a cluster of parents for news of the unaccounted-for students from Ponderosa Elementary. The principal at Ridgeview High had been charged with keeping them updated—but he knew little. He stood by and watched the parents clutch their younger children, still dressed in their jammies. Some of the adults wore work uniforms. After hours of waiting, his cellphone had pinged with a message. It contained a snapshot of the manifest, the names of the children scribbled in pen on a piece of paper. He read the list out loud and asked the parents to make the half-hour drive to Biggs if they could. Their children were alive.
Nicole hadn’t been able to wait a second longer—road closures be damned. Rowan was her only child. She had led the convoy of parents down dirt backroads, past a water hole where she liked to take her “Rowboat” fishing, guiding them to Biggs Elementary. Now she burst into the classroom.
Rowan was coloring with crayons, her straight blond hair falling into her face. Looking up, she saw her mother. The ten-year-old ran to her and collapsed into her arms, cinching her hands around her waist. Kevin’s eyes grew misty as he watched the reunion.
“I cried because I saw a deer burning,” Rowan told her mother. “I tried to be brave. I’m so sorry, Mommy.”
Nicole stroked her hair, tucking it behind her ears.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”
* * *
—
AT THE OPTIMO LOUNGE, Captain Sean Norman had a mutiny on his hands. It was around 2 p.m., and while most of the town had escaped, his group was still trapped. Rescue was in sight, though: A bulldozer had cleared the fallen trees and flaming church bus off the mile-long stretch of the Skyway below the strip mall. Buses were about to arrive to carry the 150 stranded residents downhill to an evacuation center—but nobody wanted to abandon their vehicles. Norman cleared his throat, standing in front of the weary crowd and preparing to make a speech that he knew no one was going to like. For hours, they had complained of being hungry or needing to use the bathroom. He understood why they were upset, but he wished they would just listen.
“Okay, folks,” Norman said sternly. “You have two options. If you have a full tank of gas to drive downhill, then go. If not, you are getting on the bus.” From the back of the audience, a few hands shot up. “No questions until I’m done,” he said, staring at the
m pointedly. “I am going to tell you the route that you are going to take to get out of here, and if you deviate from that route—to find your cat or check on your house—I don’t have enough firefighters to come rescue you. Every single one of you that diverts off the course is one more person I have to go find, and one less engine to save your town.”
As he finished speaking, the buses arrived. Officers directed the vehicles out of the lot, and Norman returned to his SUV. In the rearview mirror, he saw the roof of the Optimo catch fire. Within minutes, the newly renovated lounge would burn to the ground.
Norman drove south on the Skyway. The town was hushed, aside from the glug of fractured water pipes and crash of falling pines. Amid the desolation, Norman saw his colleague, a battalion chief, driving north. Norman tapped his horn and pulled over. The battalion chief had followed his father, a Cal Fire captain, into the service. He lived in Paradise with his wife and sixteen-year-old son, who had autism. The two men paused to talk, window to window. Norman explained what had happened at the strip mall.
“The same thing happened to me at the middle school,” the battalion chief responded in his slow, deliberate drawl.
For a moment, there was a lull in their conversation.
“My house is gone,” he added.
Norman had fought many terrible wildfires across the state, but the devastation had always been somewhere else, in someone else’s community. None had ever felt this personal. Seeing the pain in his friend’s eyes wrecked him. He didn’t know the right thing to say, so he didn’t say anything.
* * *
—
TRAVIS SAW THEIR HEADLIGHTS FIRST. They pierced the velvet darkness from South Libby Road, beckoning him forward. He sped the last few yards toward the fire engine, cutting the power on his four-wheeler. He introduced himself to the two firefighters from Nevada County. “They’re unconscious, I think,” he said, referring to Paul and Suzie. “Pretty much dead, or nearly there.” The men crowded onto the back of Travis’s all-terrain vehicle, wrapping their arms around one another. “Hold on tight!” one of the firefighters told his partner, clutching a duffel bag of medical supplies.
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