How you can help Camp Fire victims.
Many donating their time, money and supplies to aid those devastated by blaze
CHICO >> Mel Contant spent her birthday collecting donations and packing for the trip up to Chico. By that time, thousands had fled from the flames that wiped out nearly all of the rural town of Paradise.
Contant may live in Antioch but she’s become the mayor of the Walmart tent city, where security guards know her by name. What tore a region of Northern California apart has also brought together scores of of Bay Area residents working in a volunteer network, with Contant at the center of it.
“I’m working hand in hand with
over a dozen families,” she said on Monday, pausing during an interview to delegate tasks. “I could do the FEMA process in my sleep at this point.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, the Camp Fire had scorched 151,373
acres, destroyed 12,637 residences and killed at least 81 people in the state’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire. As thousands of displaced people search for shelter throughout a region short on available hotel rooms and home rentals,
people as far away as Park City, Utah are offering up their homes to victims.
Businesses are pitching in too — the Azad Martial Arts Center in Chico shut down to provide shel-
ter to 26 evacuees, offering movie nights, massages and meals. In a time of immense tragedy, some Bay Area residents have abandoned or delayed Thanksgiving plans, unable to enjoy the comfort of their home knowing 52,000 Butte County residents had to evacuate theirs.
These are those tales.
‘One person, connecting the dots’
Matt Ketchum had planned to spend Thanksgiving with his sister in Texas. He shopped online for plane tickets, but the holiday spirit tugged him in a different direction. “I decided that money could be better spent,” he said.
So the heavy equipment operator who’s been working in the Bay rented a 15-passenger van, called his friend Austin Caldwell of San Jose, and headed for Chico. His company gave him a fuel card, his union, Local 3, donated $200 in Visa gift cards and a family friend who owns an insurance business in Half Moon Bay donated $600 in $20 Target gift cards.
Ketchum and Caldwell intended to drive people to shelters, hotels or to stay with family but he found many were reluctant to leave the Walmart tent city. There was other work to do, and Contant handed out assignments. They loaded up a truck for an elderly man, who Ketchum described as having trouble breathing and seemed weak, and Ketchum drove a family who lost their home to a hotel in Gridley, along Highway 99 about 30 miles south of Chico.
On Monday, Contant was apartment hunting for the family staying in Gridley. As the family of four waits for a check from the federal government, the Antioch resident who grew up in Martinez said “if I have to pay for
the hotel another night until their check comes, I will.”
“I want to get them stable so (the dad) can get back to work,” said Contant, a retiree who runs a business purchasing storage units and estimates she has registered more than 20 families for FEMA funds. “I’m just one person connecting the dots here.”
As the army of volunteers help victims, they are also helping each other; part of a group of strangers who have built trust on the front lines in Chico. Ketchum plans to return Wednesday, stopping first at Contant’s home to pick up supplies for her. The pair each sent out messages Monday to help Jim Pritchard, a 68-year-old man with three dogs looking for a ride to his brother Phil’s house in Roswell, New Mexico.
“It’s heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time,” said Ketchum, who lives in Placerville but works in the Bay Area. “I expected a lot more of the Red Cross and FEMA … They are just overwhelmed, it’s not that they don’t care.”
‘It’s not about getting my name out there’
A 48-year-old Monterey
man embarked on a 20hour trip to bring two shelters to Butte County. He is picking up one trailer in Napa on Tuesday, which he purchased at a “discounted” price. On Wednesday, he’ll drive up Interstate 5 to Grants Pass, Ore., a halfway point to meet a man from Washington state who donated his trailer.
“Right before your phone call he texted me that he got on the road,” said the man who did not wish to have his name in the newspaper. “It’s not about getting my name out there. I was thinking in my mind, how am I going to sit there in my nice warm house for Thanksgiving knowing that my neighbors hours away are in the rain and the cold without a house? That bothered me.”
Of all the good he saw in Chico, one moment stood out to him. Contant had convinced a physically disabled woman and her son to move from Walmart to the karate studio across town. He and three Chico State University students helped load up their car, and one of the students volunteered to drive.
“Mel made it her mission to make sure that lady got out there,” he said Monday. “You are just seeing people do things that are pretty incredible.
It was Friday night, and these were Chico college students.”
‘I’m going to cry’
When he returns to Butte County, he’ll meet Michelle Daley Meurer. From her 80acre ranch east of the fire zone in Beckwourth, she watched as the thick plume of black smoke moved west on Nov. 8.
“I’m going to cry,” she said in a phone interview Monday. “I have 150 animals on my property. What the (expletive) would I do if I had to evacuate all these animals and where would we all go? That’s when I started reading that people needed help. I said, I got to do something because I can.”
Daley Meurer has opened up 60 acres of her property for people to park trailers. She expected four to arrive Tuesday and the man from Monterey is dropping off his, after his 20hour haul. Her new neighbors will share space with horses, bulls, chickens and a 700-pound pig named Puddles.
“She’s the sweetest thing. It’ll be pretty therapeutic,” Meurer said. Plus, “I’ve had blue skies this whole time. They are sitting in smoke and I’ve had fresh air.”