He still thought about Paul every day, tormented by the thought of what he might have done differently to help save his friend’s life. Paul’s four-wheeler was still parked in Travis’s garage. Sometimes Travis could still pretend his neighbor was alive, about to walk over and hop back on the ATV for an afternoon ride. In their kitchen, Travis and Carole had crafted a small shrine for him: a candleholder Paul had carved from knotted wood, a program from his funeral service, and one of the packets of tomato seeds that Suzie had handed to every guest. “Please plant and enjoy,” the packet read, “in honor of Paul Ernest.”
Meanwhile, Jamie and Erin Mansanares were preparing to evacuate Palermo, the unincorporated town south of Oroville where they had moved in 2019. Their home in Magalia wasn’t rebuilt yet. The relocation had been hardest on their middle daughter, Mariah, now five. Her best friend had moved to West Virginia, part of a mass exodus that sent thousands streaming out of Butte County to more affordable places. Mariah was inconsolable. She missed her friend and hated their new house. “Why did the fire pick us?” she beseeched her parents. Tezzrah, nine, and Arrianah, four, seemed to be handling things okay.
Still, Jamie hoped to get his family home by Thanksgiving. This time, they had constructed the house with fire-resistant cinderblock, even building a tiny playhouse out back with the leftover materials. Everyone was excited to return, though they knew that their timeline would likely get pushed back, as had happened frequently in the past two years. (They wouldn’t end up returning home until 2021.) Every six months, Erin wrote the $77 check to renew their P.O. box in Oroville, hoping it would be the last. She liked to work on their lot, clearing brush and hacking at the weeds, channeling her anger and grief into something productive. It helped her focus on the future. Erin planned to attend occupational therapy school in Sacramento. Jamie had been promoted to maintenance director of a Chico nursing home. They had made a contingency plan, too. If their home burned down a second time, they would move to Washington State, where they had friends.
The wildfires in California had again attracted the attention of President Trump. As he spoke with the press in August 2020, he reiterated sentiments that were uncannily similar to those of 2018. “And I see again, the forest fires are starting,” Trump told reporters. “They’re starting again in California. And I said, you’ve got to clean your floors. You’ve got to clean your floors. They have many, many years of leaves and broken trees. And they’re like, like so flammable. You touch them and it goes up. I’ve been telling them this now for three years, but they don’t want to listen. The environment. The environment. But they have massive fires again in California. Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it.” In October, he did in fact try to make the state pay for it by denying aid to communities that had been affected by six major wildfires—the North Complex Fire in Butte County was not among them—then quickly flipped his decision after the outcry that ensued.
Farther from the North Complex Fire, ash fell from the skies above Northern California. The soot fell on Tammy Ferguson’s home near Sacramento, where she now lived with her fiancé and worked as a nurse in a hospital near the state capitol. And it fell on Kevin McKay’s new house in Chico, where he and his girlfriend, Melanie, and his son, Shaun, had decided to move for good. As always, Kevin busied himself with work, digging an in-ground pool in the backyard and keeping the oak canopy neatly trimmed. He had kept his ruined lot in Paradise, just in case he tired of the valley heat and wanted to move back uphill in retirement, but it felt like that chapter of his life had closed. His parents’ cabin in Magalia, which had survived the fire, had been sold after his mother died. It was time to move on.
Kevin was on track to graduate from Chico State University in May 2021. He had scaled back on classes after the fire, pushing his graduation timeline back. But as of the fall of 2020, he was registered for twenty-one credits—all online because of the pandemic. Though he wasn’t transporting students to school these days, he regularly drove uphill to Paradise to service the buses and make sure they ran smoothly. On the drive, Kevin listened to a series of audiobooks by the historian Shelby Foote, who had written extensively on Kevin’s latest topic of fascination: the Civil War. An avid history buff, Kevin was curious to learn more about the genesis of that year’s protests over racial injustice. This aptitude for learning revealed itself in other ways, too. Recently, Kevin had made the dean’s list. And after adopting a rescue dog, he named the pooch after a historical figure he greatly admired: former British prime minister Winston Churchill.
Across Chico, the firestorm terrified Rachelle Sanders’s children. As the sky turned a granulated orange outside her apartment in the city, her nine-year-old daughter, Aubrey, hid under her covers, incapacitated by fear and shaking uncontrollably. Vincent, now eleven and starting middle school, was testy. In these moments, Rachelle was left to juggle her older children—along with Lincoln, not yet two years old—on her own. Chris had died of acute myeloid leukemia—a rare type of cancer in the bone marrow—in September 2019. He had been diagnosed two months after the Camp Fire. Though Chris had dreamed of seeing Lincoln nose-dive into his first birthday cake, he hadn’t lived long enough to attend his son’s celebration. Rachelle missed her husband, who had loved her and their family unwaveringly. The thought of their baby growing up without his father filled her with sadness.
To make things worse, in April 2020, Rachelle’s ex-husband, Mike, had been apprehended for sending sexually explicit text messages to a person he believed was a sixteen-year-old girl but was in fact a sheriff’s deputy investigating him. Mike was charged with sending harmful material to a minor, engaging in lewd or lascivious behavior, and communicating with a minor for the purpose of engaging in sexual conduct. As the court hearing neared, Rachelle gained full custody of their two children. She remained in permanent “full mom mode,” driving Aubrey to her competitive cheer practices nearly every afternoon and helping Vincent learn to use a planner for his homework assignments. Most days, Rachelle felt she was barely holding it all together. But there were moments of levity. Earlier that year, she had opened a storefront for Premium Landscaping in Chico. (After Chris had died, she had taken over their business.) As Rachelle stared at their new suite, her children ringed around her, she felt an upswell of pride. Chris would have been so proud.
Rachelle still received CodeRed alerts from Paradise, and as the fire neared her former town, an evacuation warning pinged on her cellphone. Officials had heeded the hard-learned lessons of the Camp Fire. Rather than having local authorities, like a town manager or the Police Department, issue evacuation alerts, only the Sheriff’s Office could send them, preventing confusion and redundancies. Though Rachelle didn’t think about the disaster as much these days, she did have moments. On a recent trip to pick up laptops from her children’s school, she had gotten stuck in traffic—always a trigger for her. The red wash of brake lights reminded Rachelle of being stuck in David’s car, unable to move and facing certain death, clutching her newborn son in her arms. Now, rereading the alert on her phone, Rachelle knew she likely wouldn’t return to Paradise. When the town had burned down, it had taken all of her memories—good and bad—with it. Her new life in Chico felt like a clean slate.
Maybe someday the town she had known would rise strong and whole again under the tall pines. A new wooden sign topped by another bandsaw halo was in the process of being staked off the Skyway, welcoming visitors to the Ridge. Perhaps someday the sign would again ring true, letting the weary and the curious in on a secret that everyone in town already knew: that this really and truly was paradise.
In memory of Phil John,
who believed in Paradise, even,
and especially,
when it was ruined.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
On an early morning in October 2017, I drove north from San Francisco to Santa Rosa under an ashen sky. Overnight, ferocious winds had fanned more than a dozen
wildfires across Northern California’s wine country. The evacuations were hectic; forty-one people had died. My editor at the San Francisco Chronicle had dispatched me to the working-class neighborhood of Coffey Park—the epicenter of the damage. He wanted to know what remained of it.
I arrived and parked my Corolla. It was eerily quiet. A gutted sedan rested on its side in the middle of the neighborhood park—I wondered what had happened to its driver. Even the mailboxes and road signs had melted. Residents got lost on familiar streets as they tried to locate what remained of their homes. To more easily find them the second time around, they chalked their last names in the driveways.
In the following year, I drove the ruined streets of that fire zone weekly, passing those same driveways. I listened carefully to the stories of fire victims and wrote about their traumas and triumphs for the newspaper. I sat in evacuation shelters and homeless encampments, outside hospital burn units and at new construction sites where more than fifty-six hundred homes were slowly being rebuilt, one by one. I accompanied a couple as they brought their firstborn home from the hospital, though “home” was a guest bedroom in a relative’s house, which didn’t really feel like home at all. I attended a high school prom where seniors grappled with the idea of embarking for college. Should they defer admission? They had already lost so much and couldn’t bear the thought of leaving their friends and family behind too. I watched a first grader try—and fail—to ride a donated bike without training wheels. This bike was bigger than her old one, which had been a present for her sixth birthday, just a few days before the fire. She still cried over the destroyed gift.
After witnessing such devastation, I was convinced that a fire season couldn’t get worse—but I was wrong. In 2018, the Camp Fire shattered more than records; it destroyed a state’s collective sense of safety. But even that wasn’t the end. In 2019 and 2020, fires again burned into the collective psyche. The “new normal” was here to stay.
I have spent much of my journalism career bearing witness to the human cost of climate change. Parents left without children, children left without parents. Tens of thousands of ruined homes. Hundreds of thousands of people calcified in trauma that will never heal. But through it all, I have hoped that my reporting would force others to heed the wildfire crisis unfolding in California. I have hoped that it would deeply honor fire victims and their communities. For every person who has trusted me with their precious story: Thank you. For Santa Rosa and Redwood Valley. For Mariposa, Ventura, Malibu, Redding. For Berry Creek, Feather Falls. For Concow, Magalia, Butte Creek.
For Paradise.
To the people of Butte County—more names than I have space to list—thank you for welcoming me into your lives. I don’t have sufficient words to convey my gratitude. I will carry your stories with me for the rest of my life. Cal Fire’s Matt McKenzie, David Hawks, Sean Norman, and John Messina. (See, John? I told you I wouldn’t forget your name.) Paradise Police Chief Eric Reinbold. Former Town Manager Lauren Gill, and Assistant Town Manager Marc Mattox. County Supervisor Doug Teeter. District Attorney Mike Ramsey. The kindest gatekeepers: Jill Kinney of Feather River hospital, Sonya Meyer of Heritage Paradise, Megan McMann of the Butte County Sheriff’s Office, Scotty McLean of Cal Fire. Thank you for always getting back to me promptly, even on Friday afternoons. At Paradise Town Hall, Dina Volenski and Colette Curtis always greeted me with a hug. Away from Town Hall, Chris Smith and Steve “Woody” Culleton kept me apprised of local gossip and goings-on. Paradise Post editor Rick Silva and former Chico Enterprise-Record reporter Camille von Kaenel are the kind of local journalists any community would be lucky to have; thank you for folding me into your pack. Jim Broshears and Calli-Jane Deanda have never stopped trying to make Butte County more fire safe.
Then there are the people who became like family. Phil and Michelle John opened up the spare bedroom of their home on Acorn Ridge Drive and copied me a housekey printed with sunflowers. They made Paradise feel like home. Later, after Phil died and their beautiful house overlooking the canyon was sold, Manuel and Lourdes Sanchez-Palacios took me into their home. Thank you for the homemade pesto, for the brown paper bags heavy with walnuts from your trees, and for rescheduling your weekly date night during my trips so we could share dinner. I’m also thankful to Xan Parker and Lizz Morhaim, members of Ron Howard’s documentary film crew, who let me crash in their hotel room and made me belly-laugh so hard that I almost peed my pants. I’m eternally grateful that our paths crossed. (And if you haven’t watched Rebuilding Paradise, you must.)
This book is the product of more than five hundred interviews and years of full-time wildfire coverage. I even enrolled in a professional firefighting academy to better understand fire. (Thank you to Marin County Fire Department Chief Jason Weber and Battalion Chief Jeremy Pierce for taking me on; I’m ready to hop on an engine as soon as you’ll have me.) It’s the product of coming to love a community that I embedded in: spending countless hours strolling across Paradise on my evening walks, buying ice cream sandwiches from the Holiday Market, eating green curry at Sophia’s Thai.
The people whose lives I’ve chronicled in this book offered me unfettered access to their day-to-day lives without any expectation. To maintain journalistic integrity and impartiality, they were not compensated for their time, which makes their loyalty to this project all the more humbling. To know them is one of the greatest gifts.
Rachelle Sanders swiftly answered every one of my last-minute text queries with novel-length answers. She has always been unflinchingly honest about her past, as was her late husband, Chris—may he rest in peace. Their children, baby Lincoln and the big kids, Aubrey and Vincent, exhibited incredible patience as I rode along in their family’s Suburban to cheerleading and baseball practices, or just to grab takeout for dinner, peppering their mother with questions the entire time.
Erin and Jamie Mansanares received me with warmth from the get-go. I’ve never met parents so willing to sacrifice for their children. They work incredibly hard—and they give a damn, particularly for the elderly folks in their care, a demographic that society tends to leave behind. Their daughters, Tezzrah, Arrianah, and Mariah, are incredible, loving little girls who are destined for great things.
Kevin McKay drove me and a bunch of high schoolers around on Bus 991 and was quick to extend dinner invites with his brood at their new house in Chico. Abbie Davis and Mary Ludwig spoke at length about their experiences, even though the retelling brought a jagged shadow of pain. (They also persuaded me to order my own pair of clogs.) Travis and Carole Wright, you remind me of my own parents—generous, compassionate, warmhearted. I hope that after this book, the Italian Cottage gives you a lifetime of free sandwiches.
Away from Butte County, my never-ending gratitude goes out to all those who loved this book into being, particularly my editor at Crown, Amanda Cook, whose compassion and care have been unparalleled and whose exacting edits made every draft infinitely better than the last, though the process could sometimes be painful. Still, I wish I could work with her forever. My literary agents, Larry Weissman and Sascha Alper, believed in this book from its inception and provided constant support and enthusiasm. I was only twenty-five at the time—but not once did they ever doubt me. And the rest of the team at Crown: Katie Berry, David Drake, Gillian Blake, Annsley Rosner, and Zach Phillips, along with the marketing and publicity teams, who championed this book behind the scenes and helped get it into readers’ hands. Katie, in particular, was a delightfully ruthless line editor. Julie Tate was an ace fact checker; I definitely owe her a taco for cleaning up my mistakes. Any errors that remain are my own. Thank you to Kate Hedges and Eric Josephson, who graciously shared the Konkow legend with me. And as my sensitivity reader, Adrian Jawort read through the Konkow legend, along with information about Indigenous burning practices, with a fine-toothed comb.
Thank you to former San Francisco Chronicle managing editor Kristen Go, who hired me, and fo
rmer editor in chief Audrey Cooper, who celebrated my book with too much champagne and frozen pizza. Managing Editor Demian Bulwa is one of the best narrative editors I’ve had; I wouldn’t be the reporter and storyteller I am without him. Trapper Byrne, the Chronicle’s former politics editor, promised a younger me that one day I would write my own ticket—keeping me in journalism when I was prepared to quit and try my hand at another career. Thank you for that, and also for all the coffee.
I am lucky to have been able to call the Chronicle newsroom my first professional home, and even luckier to have started my career in California, where I’ve worked alongside some of the best journalists in the business. Storytelling doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and this book would not have been possible without the incredible investigative and narrative reporting on the Camp Fire from my colleagues at the Chronicle, along with the Los Angeles Times, The Sacramento Bee, the Redding Record Searchlight, the Chico Enterprise-Record, the Chico News & Review, the Paradise Post, and others. Biggest of thanks to one of those journalists, Jason Fagone, for always answering my frantic phone calls and reassuring me that my fears were all “part of the process.” WWJD—“What Would Jason Do?”—has become a common household saying in my little flat. I could write a second book on just how amazing he is, though I’m sure that’s the last thing he would ever want. Still, be warned, Jason! It might happen…
The kindest group of people volunteered to read early versions of this manuscript and, in the process, made it so much sharper. Thank you to Jason Fagone (again), Heather Knight, Taylor McNair, Kate Rodemann, and Trisha Thadani. And to Eli Saslow, for answering a cold email in late 2018 to help me make sense of the book writing process. My mentors—Jacqui Banaszynski, Liz Brixey, and Michael Merschel—were instrumental in helping me get my start in journalism. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them.
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