Paradise: Most of town is lost after fire ravages the area
PARADISE >> Rural residents are mourning their Paradise lost, a close-knit community where many elders and working poor sought sanctuary from California’s increasing crowds, costs and chaos.
“The most beautiful place in the world,” said 67-year-old Daniel Woida, a Vietnam War veteran, who watched 50 mph winds spin, ignite and consume his home while he was atop a nearby ridge, fighting to protect a neighbor’s house. Without a car, he walked 3 miles to safety.
When Ann Ballantyne, 74, came from San Jose, “We found a quality of life here. I had four chickens — raised them from chicks. I couldn’t take the Bay Area’s traf-
fic. I couldn’t take the sirens. But now there’s just uncertainty.”
Only a charred shell is left of Paradise after the Camp fire ignited near Pulga, a former railroad town-turned-retreat center on the edge of Plumas National Forest, and raced through the communities of Concow, Magalia and Paradise, a town of 27,000. At least nine people are dead, and 6,453 homes and 260 commercial buildings are gone.
The once-welcoming “Skyway” route that linked the Sierra foothills towns to Chico, along a rocky ridgetop between Feather River Canyon and Butte Creek, is so choked in smoke that only skeletons of pine trees are visible.
Cars — many of them packed with belongings, now just burned shells — litter the roads, abandoned by people who fled with law enforcement, fire crews, family or friends to save their lives.
The local McDonald’s is gone. So is the Safeway, Ace Hardware and the AM/ PM gas station where residents grabbed coffee and chatted on their way to jobs in Chico. Restaurants and hotels also burned to the ground, leaving only fragments and, in some cases, a sign indicating what had been.
“It’s just a little foothills town,” said geographer Jacquelyn Chase of Cal State Chico, “and has been a primary destination for people who are retired.” More than one-quarter of residents are over the age of 65. The median age is 50.
The region attracted early gold miners and loggers whose fortunes rose and fell along with its ore and forests. It is rumored to have been named when an early entrepreneur arrived at his sawmill on a summer day in 1864, after a hot and dusty ride from the Sacramento Valley, and reportedly exclaimed “Boys, this is paradise.”
After the population in Paradise swelled to over 20,000 from 5,000 in the 1950s and 1960s, its residents decided to incorporate in 1979. But its growth plateaued; there are few local jobs to keep young people there. Many residents are on fixed incomes, such as Social Security and veterans or disability benefits.
“Housing is cheap there. There are a lot of trailer parks, and some poverty,” Chase said. “It’s not on a route that’s on your way to a destination, like Tahoe. It never really blossomed in that way.”
On the edge of Plumas National Forest, “They talked for years that someday a fire would happen, and it did,” she said.
The terrain is similar to what burned in Shasta County’s Carr fire — foothills filled with shrubby vegetation mixed with ponderosa and gray pines, with grasses that act like “flashy” fuels, burning fast when dry, said ecologist Eric Knapp of the U.S. Forest Service.
As fires consumed the landscape, there were few roads upon which the rural residents had to escape, in a mad dash as the fire quickly closed in on them. Traffic backed up for hours on the few roads out of town, as people attempted to flee to Chico and elsewhere.
Even the fire station near Wagstaffe Road succumbed, standing Friday morning as a burned-out shell. Gone too were most of the homes between Skyway and Pentz Road on the eastern side of Paradise.
Johnny Dykes, 62, and Tracy Benefield, 58, prepared for 16 years to buy their house off of Skyway. Sitting on almost three acres, tucked back off the road about 150 feet, the property was their dream, they said — a “jewel.”
The first news reports they heard about the fire came hours after it had started around 6:30 a.m. Thursday. Earlier, they had heard transformers popping and the sound of propane gas tanks exploding at nearby homes, but they didn’t know the magnitude of what was coming.
Benefield started making calls. Her seven children all live in Paradise and nearby Magalia — both of which were being evacuated. She took off to round up her family, all of whom were safe, she said, while Dykes packed a truck full of their belongings.
As he drove away that afternoon, officials suggested he leave his truck and evacuate with them — fewer vehicles on the road would make it easier to evacuate. Instead, he returned to the house to get his motorcycle and started down Skyway, riding on sidewalks to get around traffic. He pulled over to a shopping center to wait out the fire in the hopes that he could return home. But as he saw flames engulf nearby apartment buildings and approach a nearby Dutch Bros. coffee drive-thru, he knew he had to go.
He rode through walls of flame down Skyway, trying to reach safety.
“I’ve never seen anything else like it,” he said. In fact, he really couldn’t see anything. Smoke filled his eyes and flames were everywhere. Almost miraculously, he said, he made it through the bursts of fire to safety in Chico.
He and Benefield spent the night at Neighborhood Church of Chico — a Red Cross evacuation shelter — with their 15-year-old dog, a wolf-shepherd mix. Now, they wait to learn the fate of their dream house, knowing it likely did not escape the flames.
“If we have to start over,” Dykes said with a shrug and a smile, “we will.”
They won’t know for sure until the evacuation order is lifted.
“But we’re alive,” Benefield said.