Farewell, Paradise: Fire guts town, leaves 5 dead
Wildfire moved so fast firefighters had no chance to fight it.
A Northern PARADISE, CALIF. — California wildfire that moved so fast firefighters didn’t even try to stop it has killed five people, authorities said Friday as the blaze quadrupled in size after leveling much of a town of nearly 30,000 people.
Only a day after it began, the blaze near the town of Paradise had grown to nearly 110 square miles, and investigators found the dead in vehicles that were torched by the flames.
“There was really no firefight involved,” said Capt. Scott McLean of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, explaining that crews gave up attacking the flames and instead helped people get out alive. “These firefighters were in the rescue mode all day yesterday.”
With fires also burning in Southern California, state officials put the total number of people forced from their homes at 157,000. Evacuation orders included the entire city of Malibu, which is home to 13,000, among them some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
When Paradise was evacuated, the order set off a desperate exodus in which many motorists got struck in gridlocked traffic and abandoned their vehicles to flee on foot. People reported seeing much of the community go up in flames, including homes, supermarkets, businesses, restaurants, schools and a retirement center.
Rural areas fared little better. Many homes have propane tanks that were exploding amid the flames. “They were going off like bombs,” said Karen Auday, who escaped to a nearby town.
McLean estimated that the lost buildings numbered in the thousands in Paradise, about 180 miles northeast of San Francisco. “Pretty much the community of Paradise is destroyed. It’s that kind of devastation,” he said.
The massive blaze that hit Paradise spread north Friday, prompting officials to order the evacuation of Stirling City and Inskip, two communities north of Paradise along the Sierra Nevada foothills.
The wind-driven flames also spread to the west and reached the edge of Chico, a city of 90,000 people. Firefighters were able to stop the fire at the edge of the city,.
Wind in the valley calmed down, but they were still shifting and erratic along the ridgetops, with speeds of up to 45 mph), he said.
With ash falling and the sky darkening to a menacing shade of black, evacuees from Paradise sat in stunned silence Friday outside a Chico church where they took refuge the night before.