STAGGERED CALIFORNIA EVACUATION QUESTIONED

MAGALIA, Calif. — Ten years ago, as two wildfires advanced on Paradise, residents jumped into their vehicles to flee and got stuck in gridlock. That led authorities to devise a staggered evacuation plan — one that they used when fire came again last week.

But this time, Paradise’s carefully laid plans quickly devolved into a panicked exodus. Some survivors said that by the time they got warnings, the flames were already extremely close, and they barely escaped with their lives. Others said they received no warnings at all.

Now, with at least 63 people dead and perhaps 630 unaccounted for in the nation’s deadliest wildfire in a century, authorities are facing questions of whether they took the right approach.

Reeny Victoria Breevaart, who lives in Magalia, a forested community of 11,000, said she couldn’t receive warnings because cellphones weren’t working. She also lost electrical power. Just over an hour after the first evacuation order was issued at 8 a.m., she said, neighbors came to her door to say: “You have to get out of here.”

In his defense, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said evacuation orders were issued through 5,227 emails, 25,643 phone calls and 5,445 texts, in addition to social media and the use of loudspeakers. As cellphone service went down, authorities went into neighborhoods with bullhorns to tell people to leave, and that saved some lives.

President Donald Trump plans to travel to California on Saturday to visit victims of the wildfires burning at both ends of the state.