San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Re- creating Paradise
possible.
“We’re trying very, very hard to rebuild, but with all the things going on, it’s been the most horrible nightmare,” said Karen Gowins.
She, her husband and their grown son spent a year and a half crammed into two trailers in Magalia before the family bought a house in Chico in May. Her husband was depressed and facing health problems, and they needed stability, she said.
Gowins faced her own challenges. She was a member of a committee representing fire victims in PG& E’s bankruptcy process until she resigned in protest earlier this year because she feared victims wouldn’t get what was promised when the company’s stock fell. She said she has battled with her insurance company to collect enough on her coverage to rebuild. Then she faced delays in getting her property cleaned and her septic system approved, she said, while the pandemic and power shutoffs slowed permitting.
“I consider myself lucky because at least I feel like I’m focused and moving forward,” she said. “There are so many that are overwhelmed and so disappointed.”
Sara McDowell and Robert Seibert, whose trailer burned in the Camp Fire, landed in Red Bluff in Tehama County, an hour northwest of Paradise, in March 2019. A year and a half later, they feel stuck. The couple considered returning to Paradise, but said it’s a shell of the town they once called home.
“Everybody we knew up there, we were close to, is gone. There is really nothing there for us,” McDowell said. “We just want to be done with the Camp Fire.”
Camp Fire survivors were tested during this year’s unprecedented wildfire season. When the North Complex fire pushed toward town on Sept. 9, PG& E had already shut off
measures like Proposition 47, which reduced the punishment for some nonviolent crimes. He championed other landmark initiatives like realignment, which allowed some people to serve their sentences in local jails, and sponsored a successful bill that automatically scrubbed convictions off eligible records.
Gascón’s tenure ushered in an era of nearrecordlow rates of violent crime, a legacy that was often undercut by those who pointed to the city’s soaring rates of property crime. Critics often blame San Francisco’s epidemic of car burglaries on some of the progressive reforms Gascón championed.
Gascón’s successor, San
Two years after the Camp Fire, a fraction of the town is rebuilt. Members of roughly 500 households are living in RVs on burned properties.
REBUILDING
Residential
Single- family homes
Multi- family units power to nearly 13,000 customers in Butte County as a precaution. An estimated 1,300 Comcast customers in Paradise lost internet and phone service , a potentially dangerous breach in an emergency, Police Chief Eric Reinbold said. PG& E has pledged to bury its power lines in Paradise to make them fire safe and has completed almost 23 miles, but the project will take five years, spokesman Paul Moreno said.
Other projects Phillips hopes will make Paradise safer aren’t finished yet. The town is to get solarbatterypowered sirens and speakers to communicate
Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, told The Chronicle he was “ecstatic” about Gascón’s win in L. A.
“It’s great for L. A. County, it’s great for California, and it’s great for the national criminal justice reform movement,” Boudin said. “I’m excited about the ways we’ll work together in the North and South, to make California a safer, more just and better place for all of its residents.”
Gascón’s victory will have untold implications for district attorneys statewide, almost all of whom are members of the California District Attorneys Association. The association has historically pushed back on many of the reform measures emergency messages by next fire season. Within two years, it hopes to widen streets, create more evacuation routes and eliminate deadend roads. Paradise is also working to create fire breaks and pushing the state to more quickly remove burned trees, which can fall in windstorms.
For many in Paradise, this fire season triggered trauma and questions of whether to stay.
Jess Mercer, a local artist who created a phoenix sculpture out of thousands of keys from destroyed buildings and cars, launched an art therapy
Gascón and others have promoted, and it’s unclear how Gascón will influence the group now or whether he will join.
Gascón and Boudin, along with San Joaquin County District Attorney Tori Verber Salazar and Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton, recently founded a new, reformminded lobbying organization for California district attorneys, intended to serve as a counterweight to the association and police unions’ traditional toughoncrime causes.
Megan Cassidy is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: megan. cassidy@ sfchronicle. com Twitter: @ meganrcassidy program for young people a week before the North Complex fire threatened town. She called Paradise “one hell of a resilient town,” but said there’s only so much stress some survivors can take.
“People are soul tired,” she said. “This last round of outages might have been that final push to get people to leave.”
Many people had already left Butte County, including Mira Sendan. Her grief remains raw; she still cries over her cat, Spooky, who burned in the Camp Fire.
“People are still emotionally messed up,” said Sendan, who now lives in Sacramento.
Others who left can’t escape fire. Darrel Wilken, a nurse at the former Feather River Hospital who barely survived the Camp Fire with three patients in his car, moved to work at a partner hospital in St. Helena. This year, he evacuated that hospital twice.
“I’m currently suffering the emotional effects of the fire, and I always will,” Wilken said. “The past two months reaffirmed my concern and fears that we are not safe.”
In a few years, Wilken plans to buy a boat and spend half the year sailing: “I’m tired of California being on fire all the time.”
Others are determined to stay. Rebecca Burroughs, who grew up in Paradise, returned to rebuild with her family this summer after feeling unsettled living in Chico.
“The fire isn’t going to keep us from our home,” she said.
In honor of the twoyear anniversary, the local Chamber of Commerce pulled together a list of rebuilt sites to drive by, and Mercer created a wishing well for residents to toss letters in. The town plans to give away daffodils Sunday.
At Brooks’ underconstruction home, contractors Hoss Brown and Rick Shanks carried wooden beams into the kitchen. Shanks had found out his wife was pregnant two days before the fire, and the couple now have a 17monthold daughter and a home in Magalia. Brown just rebuilt his home in Paradise after living in a trailer with his wife, two kids and two dogs since the fire.
“It’s not easy,” Brown said. “There’s a lot of anxiety, but where do you go? I’m from where the earth moves and things catch on fire. That’s what I know.”
Mallory Moench is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory. moench@ sfchronicle. com Twitter:@ mallorymoench