Paradise, California, leveled in less than a day
PARADISE, Calif. — The air thick with smoke from a ferocious wildfire that was still burning homes Saturday, residents who stayed behind to try to save their property or who managed to get back to their neighborhoods in this Northern California town found cars incinerated and homes reduced to rubble.
People surveyed the damage and struggled to cope with what they had lost. Entire neighborhoods were leveled and the business district was destroyed by a blaze that threatened to explode again with the same fury that largely incinerated the foothill town.
Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said Saturday 14 additional bodies were found. The death toll from the blaze stood at 25 late Saturday night. He said an additional search and rescue team was being brought in to search for remains.
The flames burned down more than 6,700 buildings, almost all of them homes, making it California’s most destructive wildfire since record-keeping began. There were 35 people still missing.
Sheriff’s deputies recovered human remains from at least five homes as they went house-to-house in Paradise canvassing for the missing. It was unclear if the remains were in addition to the nine fatalities already reported by the Butte County Sheriff’s Office.
More firefighters headed to the area Saturday, with wind gusts of up to 50 mph expected, raising the risk of conditions similar to those when the fire started Thursday, said Alex Hoon with the National Weather Service. The blaze grew to 156 square miles, but crews made gains and it was partially contained, officials said.
People sidestepped metal that melted off cars and Jet-Skis and donned masks as they surveyed ravaged neighborhoods despite an evacuation order for all of Paradise, a town of 27,000 founded in the 1800s. Some cried when they saw nothing was left.
Jan MacGregor, 81, got back to his small two-bedroom home in Paradise with the help of his firefighter grandson. He found his home leveled — a large metal safe and some pipe work from his septic system the only recognizable traces. The safe was punctured with bullet holes from guns inside that went off in the scorching heat.
He has lived in Paradise for nearly 80 years, moving there in 1939 when he said the town had just 3,000 people and was nicknamed Poverty Ridge. The fire was not a complete surprise, he said.
“We knew Paradise was a prime target for forest fire over the years,” he said. “We’ve had ’em come right up to the city limits — oh yeah — but nothing like this,” he said.
MacGregor said he probably would not rebuild: “I have nothing here to go back to.”
Homes and other buildings in Paradise were still burning, and fire crews were trying to extinguish those blazes, said Scott McLean, a captain with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Officials warned firefighters to wear their helmets and be careful of falling trees.
Abandoned, charred vehicles cluttered the main thoroughfare, evidence of the panicked evacuation as the wildfire tore through Thursday. The dead were found mostly inside their cars or outside vehicles and homes.
Five of the dead panicked when they couldn’t escape by car because their route was cut off by a wall of fire, said Gabriel Fallon, who rode out the blaze with his parents to care for the horses, cows and livestock on their 10-acre farm in Paradise.
The group turned the other way and dashed down the paved street until it turned into dirt and passed the Fallons’ farm, he said. One of the drivers stopped and asked Fallon if the direction they were going would lead them to safety. Fallon said he shook his head as the fire roared closer.
The motorists parked at the end of the road. On Saturday, the charred shells of the five cars remained where they had been parked.
Fallon went back to his property, where he, and his parents and their animals weathered the fire with a garden hose. The fire consumed their home, but left the barn intact.
“I was scared as hell,” said Fallon, 42. “I didn’t know if I was going to die.”
His mother, Cathy Fallon, said she tries not to think of what she lost when her house burned to the ground. Two of her dogs and nine cats died. She also lost her great-grandmother’s mandolin and end table.
“I just can’t think about it,” she said, beginning to cry. “The thing that hurts the most is that I lost my cats.”
Elinor “Jeannie” Williams, 86, was not among the nine victims of the blaze but died as she waited to be airlifted from an evacuated hospital where she was being treated for a head injury.
She was dying, and the family expected to lose her in a few days, said her stepdaughter, Lisa. Still, her death has been hard on her 84-year-old father, Robert, who also may have lost his home, she said.