Outrunning death in ‘Fire in Paradise’
The idea of a documentary on the Camp Fire that laid waste to the small town of Paradise in Butte County might seem offputting. Considering you can get frightening footage in real time on today’s local newscasts of the stillraging Kincade Fire, why revisit last year’s disaster?
But “Fire in Paradise,” the new 40minute documentary that drops on Netflix on Friday, Nov. 1 (not to be confused with the “Fire in Paradise” episode of PBS’ “Frontline” that aired earlier this week), lends a welcome sense of perspective. A year removed from their lifethreatening experiences, a first responder, his wife and two children, a fire ranger, two schoolteachers and a 911 call center operator are among those who recount their experi
ences, the decisions they made the first day as the fire zone expanded at breakneck pace and the moments that they feared their lives were about to end.
The Camp Fire killed 85 people and burned more than 240,000 square miles and more than 12,000 structures over three weeks. It was the deadliest fire in California in more than 100 years, and in the aftermath of that fateful first 24 hours, first responders opened the largest search and rescue mission in state history.
Directors Zackary Canepari and Oakland resident Drea Cooper use news, social media footage and animated maps to set the stage, then delve deeper into the firstperson experience with their subjects.
The “star” of the film is Cal Fire Capt. Sean Norman, a first responder who repeatedly drove through Paradise getting the word out that citizens would have to evacuate — until he could do no more. Aided by his dashcam footage, Norman describes some people being angry at him for being forced to leave their homes.
Norman recalls one family that he piled into his patrol vehicle. When their cat zipped out of the vehicle and back in the house, one of the family members went after the pet. Norman recalled yelling, “If you go back in there, you will die. We have to leave now.”
Would seem obvious, right? But the Camp Fire moved so fast, residents had in some cases only minutes to flee.
That was the story of schoolteachers Abbie Davis and Mary
Ludwig, who were attempting to drive a busload of students to safety with fire all around them. Ludwig movingly recalls, “Abbie sat next to me and she said, ‘Mary, I don’t think we’re going to get out.’ “
“Fire in Paradise” is compelling, but it certainly leaves you wanting more, and one wonders what went into the decision to limit it to 40 minutes when there seems to be so much more to tell (Netflix is trying to position it for an Oscar nomination for short documentary).
Perhaps a clue to territory that could have been explored is couched in Norman’s assessment of climate change and its role in the everworsening fire seasons in California: “It most certainly is not normal. And I want it to stop being normal. … I’m living for half the year of being at war.”
But Canepari and Cooper will leave that to other films. For them, “Fire in Paradise” is about ordinary people who stared death in the face and lived to tell about it.